


Her mind's death

by tessaleia



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Eventual Smut, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Minor Character Death, Suicide Attempt, season 6 AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-04-06 21:11:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 67,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19070758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tessaleia/pseuds/tessaleia
Summary: As strings of green light were dancing around them, dangerously shattering time and reality, he held her body firmly against his.Or when Bellamy will risk everything to get Clarke back.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> _I'm adding this note to avoid any confusion, because I feel that I haven't been explicit enough about what this story is. It takes place right after season 5, and it's basically an attempt to fix the complete mess it was in terms of characterisation. There are similarities with season 6 regarding the storyline of Clarke's body being taken over by Josephine, but the main plot is completely different - and so is the world I'm building. That being said, this story is about Bellamy and Clarke being two angsty idiots in love in a world they know nothing about, and it's about Bellamy risking everything to get Clarke back once he realises he lost her again. Also, Murphy's going to play an important role here because I'm just a sucker for his character. The story is now completely mapped out (tags will be added as it progresses), and I have to warn you that it's not a happy one. It only gets darker, but I really hope you'll enjoy anyway!_

"No more fighting, Clarke," Russell said, almost lovingly, as he stroke her hair. "Be at peace. A better place, just like you said you wanted." He softly kissed her forehead. "Thank you for this."

Clarke was more afraid than she had ever been. A tear ran down the side of her nose before falling on the metallic table she was lying on, completely paralysed. 

This couldn't be the end, could it? Not when she'd just caught a glimpse of happiness. 

She just wanted to live, so badly. 

But her eyes were getting heavier, everything was fading away, and she could only hold onto the feeling of Bellamy's arms wrapped around her until her mind's death came.


	2. What is left to say

_Be the good guys_ , Monty said. _May we meet again._

Clarke was crying, unable to accept that more than a hundred years had passed. Monty, Harper, Jordan, the Earth, this new planet with two suns... 

It was just too much at the same time. It was heartbreaking, and it was beautiful. 

She looked at Bellamy, needing him to hug her, to make her feel safe. She wanted to close her eyes and forget everything only for a brief moment. 

"They're dead," he said while staring at the window and crying silently. "Monty died alone. How am I supposed to care about this new home if it cost his life? And Harper's?" 

He seemed so distressed, so vulnerable, that Clarke couldn't resist to move a little closer. She took his hand, trying to give him the comfort she needed herself. 

His eyes reached for hers, and she felt her heartbeat racing up as she saw a spark in them she hadn't seen since Praimfaya. She couldn't tell what it was. It just felt like the Bellamy she used to know so perfectly. 

The moment lingered. Clarke was hardly breathing, afraid to say or do some something that would make him disappear...

"I know it must be a lot," Jordan said suddenly, breaking the moment. "It is for me. I miss them."

The spark in Bellamy's eyes vanished. He let go of Clarke's hand, and slowly walked to Jordan. 

"Jordan, I..." he began, seeming unsure of what to say. 

"It's fine," Jordan replied. He was smiling, but his smile wasn't reaching his eyes. "I knew I wasn't going to see them again when I went into cryo. They prepared me for this moment, but I think I underestimated how hard it would actually be." 

Bellamy hugged him, hesitantly, and Jordan let himself cry quietly. 

"Your parents were such good people, Jordan," Clarke said. 

"I know." He moved away from Bellamy. "I'll let you two talk. I'd like to be by myself a bit. Maybe going through my parents' stuff, making sure they didn't left anything else for us to find. Besides, we'll have plenty of time to get to know each other."

He then walked out of the room, leaving Clarke and Bellamy alone.

"We should discuss who we need to wake up from cryo," Clarke said as she realised she wasn't ready to be alone with him.

For the six years she had been waiting for her friends to come back, she had a lot of time to think about how space would change them. She just never thought Bellamy would be the one to change the most. It's like he was now a completely different person. He wasn't driven by his heart anymore, and she was having a hard time looking at him without being reminded that she lost her best friend. 

Bellamy nodded, avoiding her stare. 

"Madi stays in cryo until we know this planet is safe," Clarke decided, her voice trembling. She wanted to have Madi with her so badly, but keeping her alseep was the right decision. 

"So does Octavia."

If he was affected by his decision, he wasn't showing it. It was also the right one, but the Bellamy she knew would have wanted to wake his sister up at any cost. 

"Are you sure?" she asked. 

"We can't trust her right now. She's a loose cannon."

"I know, it's just...", she trailed off. 

She didn't know why she asked him if he was sure of his choice. Maybe she was looking for something, for answers. Maybe she wanted to confront him. 

"I just don't know who she is anymore." He still wasn't looking at her, and it made her feel a bit angry. 

"I know that feeling, trust me," she snapped before she could stop herself. 

Bellamy finally looked at her, confused. And then, as if he understood, he walked to her, but she took a few steps back. 

"Clarke, I-" he almost whispered, but she cut him before he could say more. 

"We should wake up Raven and Shaw. We're going to need them if we want to land in one piece on this planet."

Bellamy looked hurt. There was a moment of silence, then he turned his back to her.

"I also want to wake up Murphy and Emori," he said while staring at the computer screen. "And Echo." 

Clarke flinched at the last name. She touched her neck, remembering when Echo tried to choke her to death for leaving Bellamy in the fighting pits. She wondered if he knew about it. 

"Fine, wake them up", she tried to keep her voice from shaking. "I'll wake up my mother."

Bellamy still had his back turned to her. She felt as if there was nothing left to say between them, or as if there was everything left to say. Either way, she just wanted to get away from him. 

A tear fell on her cheek.

"I'll let you wake up your family," she said. "Then I'll wake up mine."

She almost ran out of the room, feeling Bellamy's eyes on her as she did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! It's my first fanfic, so I'm a bit learning as I go here.


	3. The sky from the Earth

Abby opened her eyes, waking up from cryo.

"Clarke? Has it been ten years?" 

Clarke helped her to sit, then she sat next to her. She had thought a lot about this moment in the last few hours, about what to say, how to say it.

"What is it?" Abby asked, worried.

"It's been more than ten years, mom, a lot more." She took a deep breath. "Monty and Harper never went into cryo. They chose to have a long and peaceful life together, on the ship. They had a son, Jordan. " 

"Clarke, I'm not sure I understand." 

"When they realized life wasn't coming back on Earth after ten years, they didn't wake us up."

"How many years have we...?"

"A hundred and twenty-five years. Life on Earth never came back."

Abby softly touched her daughter's cheek, suddenly crying.

"They put Jordan into cryo because they wanted him to have a life outside of the ship. Monty worked all his life on cracking the Eligius III mission file. He never gave up, and he succeeded a few years after Harper died."

Clarke felt tears in her eyes at the thought of the friends she lost. 

"What did he find?" Abby asked with curiosity. 

"It turns out Eligius III wasn't a mining mission. They found a new planet, and Monty set the course to it before he died. It's... It's beautiful, mom. There are two suns! I can't wait for you to see it." 

Abby smiled. "I can't wait to see it too but, after you show me, I need to prepare the medical room for Marcus. I need to make sure he'll make it after what happened to him." 

Clarke helped her get on her feet. 

"Who else is out of cryo?" Abby asked. "Madi?"

"No, she's not. I won't wake her up until I'm sure the planet's safe."

"Who else, then?" 

Clarke looked away from her, feeling uncomfortable. 

"Bellamy woke up Raven, Murphy, Echo, Emori and Shaw a few hours ago. I just needed to be alone for a whike before waking you up."

"What is it, Clarke?" Abby asked as she something was wrong. "Why weren't you with your friends when they woke up? Tell me." 

Clarke closed her eyes. _I love him_ , she wanted to say. _I always have, but I just realized it too late. I talked to him every day for six years, waiting for him to come back so I could tell him how I felt. Only, he didn't really came back, and it hurts so fucking bad. I don't know how to act around this new Bellamy, I don't know what to say to him. And I have so many contradictory feelings! One moment I feel like I need him and, then, I don't! I know that he'd changed, that he's now with her, that he's happy. I guess I just have to accept all of that, but it's hard. It's hard only looking at him._

"I had a tense discussion with Bellamy earlier," she said instead. "I don't... I don't feel like I belong with them anymore. I'm not even sure I can still call them my friends." 

She stopped for a moment, wondering if she wanted to say more. She did want to say more, and she needed someone to hear it. 

"I get it, you know. They spent six years together in space. They became a family. I sometimes wished I had gone with them but, then, I wouldn't have met Madi."

Abby nodded as if she understood more than what Clarke actually revealed. "I know you missed _him_ the most. You two always had a special bond, and I know you'll find a way to work it out. You always did."

Clarke hugged her, grateful to have her mother with her. 

"You know I missed you too, right?" she said. "Thank you for what you just said." She moved away from her. "what about we go see this planet? "

When they walked into the control room, only Bellamy, Murphy and Raven were there. Abby didn't even acknowledge them when she walked in, she just went straight to the window.

"It's good to see you too, Abby," Murphy teased her. He was nonchalantly standing against a wall, his injured arm in a sling.

Raven made a frustrated sound, looking bitterly at Abby and Clarke before storming out.

Clarke felt her heart sink a little. She knew Raven was angry at her for betraying them, but she didn't know she was _this_ angry.

"She'll come around," Bellamy said as if he was reading her mind.

She nodded, only glancing at him for a brief moment. He was sitting in front of the computer, seeming tense, and she wondered if it was because of the conversation they had a few hours ago.

Abby finally looked away from the window. "Hi, John," she said, smiling. "How's your arm?"

"It's fine. I'll survive."

"I'm sure you will, but I still want to examine it later." She walked to Bellamy. "Clarke told me about the video. I'd like to see it." 

Bellamy clicked on a file, and Monty's face appeared on the screen. Clarke quickly looked away, trying to focus on something else. Something that wouldn't make her cry again because she was so fucking tired of crying. 

She went to the window. The planet was as beautiful as she remembered, and she was so excited for Madi to see it. She even let herself imagine, for a moment, the peaceful life they could have, similar to the one they had for six years.

"Hey," Murphy told her, still leaning against a wall. "You know I was angry at you for betraying us, right? But I realized I've done worse myself so..." 

He didn't say anything else, but Clarke understood this was his weird way of making amends with her. 

"We're both used to screw up, aren't we?" she answered, almost smiling. "It seems that I still have a lot to make up for though, especially to Raven."

"Yeah, she's pretty pissed."

Clarke laughed. She couldn't argue with that.

"For what it's worth", Murphy added, "I think we owe you a lot, and-" he looked at Bellamy and then at her, seeming conflicted as if he wanted to say something about him to her but wasn't sure he should, "we wouldn't have made it to space without you so, yeah, you may have some leverage with Raven after all. She's only alive because of you." He smiled, a bit smugly.

Clarke smiled too, feeling lighter. "Where are the others?" she asked.

"Jordan is showing the bedrooms to Echo and Emori, and Shaw is searching for something to eat," Murphy answered. "I bet he'll only find algea..."

He suddenly seemed lost in his thoughts, looking genuinely sad. Clarke wondered if he was thinking about Monty. 

"May we meet again," she heard her mother said, echoing Monty at the end of the video. "I- I just wonder how Harper managed to give birth without a doctor."

"My mom didn't need a doctor," Bellamy said. "She did it alone. Well, I was with her, but I was only a child."

"Still, it's risky and I wouldn't recommand it. Maybe they...", she began, looking thoughtful, and she quickly turned to Clarke. "I'll see you later. I'd like to prepare the medical room for Marcus," she said before leaving. 

Clarke also wanted to leave, but she was curious. "Have you found something new about the planet?" she asked.

"We did," Bellamy said. "Turns out it's not a planet, it's a moon."

"What about the planet it orbits, then? Why are we not landing there?"

"Raven thinks it's uninhabitable," Murphy answered. "It's covered with green gases, so I'll pass."

"Green gases?"

"We're not sure it's gas for now," Bellamy specified. "But there's no doubt it's green, and it's moving. The moon seems perfectly habitable though."

"When are we landing?"

"We thought it would be better if we stayed a couple more days on the ship before going down, to make sure we're completely ready. The more we know about the moon, the better. Besides, we still don't know if Eligius III even landed on it. We can't track them for now." 

Clarke nodded. "Keep me updated, then." She was walking towards the door when Bellamy stood up abruptly, as if he wanted to stop her from leaving. 

"Aren't you eating with all of us? We were going to the dining room before you-"

"I don't-" she cut him. "I'm tired. I think I just want to sleep." 

She didn't wait for him to reply. She was indeed tired, but she also wasn't ready to be eating with all of them. Seeing them interact with each other like a family, it would only make her feel more isolated than she already was.

Before waking up her mother from cryo, she had wandered alone around the ship for a few hours. So, as she was now walking away from the control room, or from him, she knew exactly where she was going.

She arrived at the end of a corridor. There was a bedroom, isolated from the other ones. She slowly opened the door. No one was inside, so she entered.

It was a small but cozy room with a large window. The walls were painted a light blue, and they made her think of the sky from the Earth. There was a lot of family pictures hanging a bit everywhere. Clarke took the pictures down, putting them in the top drawer of the desk near the bed. Then, she moved the bed so she could see the stars while lying down. She kicked off her shoes, and she let herself fall onto the bed without even taking off her clothes. She fell asleep almost instantly.


	4. Something for you

_Clarke was sitting against a tree, drawing in her sketchbook. She could smell the scent of the damp earth, and she could feel the wind gently caressing her face. She looked at Madi swimming in the lake. Today was a good day, she was feeling happy and peaceful. She couldn't stop herself from lifting her head towards the blue sky, thinking about them. It had been almost five years._

_She went back to her sketch, making sure she was capturing the sense of relief on Bellamy's face. She then worked on the details of his Azgeda scout uniform. She heard Madi getting out of the water, and she felt her on her side only seconds after. She smelled of salted water._

_"I think it's one of my favorite story about him," she told Clarke. "I still can't believe he dressed himself as an Azgeda and crossed a field full of them to get you back."_

_Clarke smiled. "He would have done the same for anyone else."_

_Madi sighed, rolling her eyes. "He loved you," she said. "He wouldn't have done the same for anyone else."_

_Clarke thought about it for a moment. Could Madi be right? Did Bellamy love her? It wasn't the first time she made comments like this one, and Clarke never really took them seriously._

_"Will you tell him? About how you feel?" Madi asked._

_Clarke froze. How could she know about her feelings for Bellamy? She never talked about them, she always kept them for herself._

_"I-I don't..." she stuttered._

_Madi rolled her eyes again, looking exasperated._

_"You two idiots deserve each other," she said before going back to the lake._

 

Clarke woke up, feeling disoriented.

She looked around, panicked. The stars in the window, the blue walls. It all came back to her at the same time, and she started to cry softly. She just wanted to see Madi right now, but she couldn't. She wiped her eyes and got up, looking in the dresser for some Eligius clothes that could fit her then leaving the bedroom. She found the shared bathroom and got in the shower. While washing herself, she thought about Bellamy. Was it possible that he used to love her?

She got out of the shower and put on the clothes she'd just found, wondering for how long she slept. She decided to go to the medical room, thinking she could find her mother there. But it was empty, so she went to the control room. Also empty. 

She wandered around the ship until she heard people laughing not too far away. She walked towards the laughs, and she arrived in front of the dining room. Abby was sitting at the back of the room, talking with Jordan. Clarke realized she would have to walk past her 'friends' if she wanted to sit with her mother. 

Bellamy, Echo, Raven, Shaw, Murphy and Emori were all sitting at the same table, near the entrance of the room. They were talking, laughing. They looked happy together, and Clarke noticed how Shaw seemed to perfectly fit in. 

Clarke took her courage in both hands and stepped into the room. There was a moment of silence, but she refused to look at them as she was walking towards her mother.

"Clarke!" she heard Murphy said. 

She stopped, composing herself before turning to him. 

"Come sit with us," he said. 

She glanced at the others. Emori was smiling, Echo was coldly studying her, Raven was glaring at Murphy, Shaw was looking impassive and Bellamy was staring at his own hands. 

"Thanks, but I need to speak to my mother." 

Murphy looked disappointed, but she didn't wait for him to say something before she turned her back to them and walked away. Her mother was having a tense conversation with Jordan. 

"I can't believe this!" Abby said loudly. She was angry. 

"Is everything alright?" Clarke asked her, concerned. 

"No, it's not." She stood up, glancing at Jordan. "But I need to go back to the medical room." Then she left. 

Clarke sat in front of Jordan. He looked shaken, so she put her hand on his. 

"Wanna talk about what just happened?" 

"I'm not sure I should," he answered. "I clearly upset her. I didn't mean to..." 

"I know you didn't, Jordan. She's just under a lot stress right now. With what's going on with Kane... I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't even sleep since waking up from cryo."

She smiled, trying to reassure him. 

"She started talking to me about my birth. She wanted to know how my parents managed without a doctor, and I told her they didn't. They woke up Eric." 

"Jackson? Why didn't they wake up my mother?"

"That's also what she asked me, and I shouldn't have answered." 

"The pills," Clarke quickly understood. "They didn't wake her up because of her addiction." 

"They'd rather not risk a relapse."

"It's understandable, and you did nothing wrong. I'll talk to her." 

Jordan nodded, and he pushed a bowl full of algea towards her. "I kept you one. You slept for almost sixteen hours, so I thought you'd be hungry."

"Sixteen hours? Did you learn anything new about the moon? Or Eligius?"

"Raven did. She found the location of an Eligius solar beacon, but the data related to it is wrong."

"How so?"

"It says the beacon has been on the moon for more than a thousand years, but Eligius only left Earth less than three hundred years ago." 

"That doesn't make any sense..."

Before she could ask anything else, she heard Raven call Jordan. 

"I told Raven I'd show her the navigation system," he said.

"It's fine, go with her. I'll see you later."

Jordan smiled to her, then he left her alone with her bowl of algea. 

Everyone else had left the dining room but Bellamy. He joined her, and she felt her pulse speeding up. 

"Hey," he said, sitting down next to her.

"Hey." 

He was close enough so that she could feel his warmth, and she could perfectly see all of his freckles. She couldn't help herself but look at his mouth. How many times has she imagined kissing him if not too many? When waiting for him on Earth, she used to dream of him, of the both of them. Of his mouth on hers, on her neck, on her breasts...

"Clarke? Are you ok?" he asked.

She blushed. She was turned on, and he wasn't even doing anything to make her feel this way. It'd just been a long time since she was with someone. 

"Yes, I'm fine," she said, a bit ashamed. She was staring at her bowl of algea. "You wanted to talk to me?"

"I'm..."

But he didn't say more and Clarke looked at him, noticing his eyes weren't on hers. They were on her mouth, and then...

"I-I just wanted to give you an update," he said, getting up. He looked troubled, almost uncomfortable. "And I wanted to make sure you were fine. I know our conversation didn't end well, and I should've come to see to you after. I'm sorry if I said or did something..."

"I'm fine," she lied. "I just needed to be alone." She paused, wishing she could talk to him how she used to. "What's the update?"

He looked at her as if he knew she wasn't fine. 

"We're thinking we could land on the moon the day after tomorrow. Raven's working on tracking Eligius back with the data she gathered from the solar beacon. Shaw's making sure the transportation ship won't kill us. Murphy and Emori are drying some algea to bring with us. Echo's..." he paused. "You should come in the control when you're finished eating. I have something for you." 

He smiled, looking excited. 

"I will", she said.


	5. Left alone

"I have something for you."

Clarke's heart skipped a beat when he said that. She tried really hard not to blush again, but she felt her cheeks burning. His eyes were filled with some kind of excitement as they were looking at her, and she could only think about how beautiful he was in this moment. 

"I will," she said. 

He seemed only more excited when he left the dining room. Clarke wondered what it was that he had for her. Maybe he found some alcohol, and they could finally have this drink together. But would he really be this excited for a drink? And what about his eyes longing on her mouth? Was it possible that...

 _Don't go there, Clarke,_ she thought. _It's not what you think, and it never will be. He doesn't care about you the way you care about him. He cares about Echo._

She felt her heart sinking. She remembered when she was chained in the bunker, and they were arguiying over putting the Flame in Madi's head.

_The answer's no. Now unchain me, so we can get the hell out of here before we all get executed for treason._

_Clarke... Echo, Raven, Murphy and Emori are my family. I'm sorry, this is happening._

The way he put emphasis on the word 'my'. It nearly destroyed her. It was the moment she realized they had become strangers to each other. She wasn't part of his family, and he didn't want to be part of hers. She couldn't get this moment out of her head, and it had become like a broken record. _Echo, Raven, Murphy and Emori are 'my' family._ So when he told her he wanted to wake them up from cryo, she lost it. 

_I'll let you wake up your family. Then I'll wake up mine._ She wanted to make him react, to make him feel how hurt she was. Maybe she hoped he would stop her from leaving, and he would tell her how bad he missed her. He would tell her that she was part of his family too. But he didn't flinched when she said that. He didn't even look at her. He did nothing. He let her go. 

She was stupid to get her hopes up. They only spent a few months together on Earth, and he spent six years in space with them. Even if he used to love her, it didn't matter anymore. He may have mourned her for a couple of weeks, but he moved on while she was thinking about him every fucking day. She talked to him everyday. He never heard her, and maybe it was better this way because it only made her look desperate. 

He was her person, but she wasn't his. 

And maybe, even, he was only talking to her out of pity. Because she was left behind to die alone. Because spending six years talking only to a child fucked her up to the point where she didn't even know how to have meaningful interactions with her friends when they came back, so she isolated herself. Because she betrayed everyone, and she had no friends left. Maybe he didn't want her in his life anymore, but he felt guilty for what happened to her. 

Maybe she was a burden to him.

_Bellamy, I need you and we don't have much time._

_You need me?_

_Yes, I do. I need the guy who wouldn't let me pull that lever in Mount Weather by myself._

_You left me. You left everyone._

_Bellamy..._

_Enough, Clarke! You are not in charge here and that's a good thing because people die when you're in charge. ___

__Maybe she always has been a burden._ _

__She took her time finishing her bowl of algea, trying to calm herself down. Once she was done, she sighed and left the dining room. She was walking when she heard Murphy and Emori talking in the hallway leading to the control room. She stopped, wondering if she should make her presence known._ _

__"It's going to be fine, John."_ _

__"Is it? Because I'm not sure I can do it without you." Murphy's voice sounded heated._ _

__"I'm not going away. We'll still see each other."_ _

__"Yeah, but only as friends. It's not how I want us to be."_ _

__She clearly wasn't supposed to hear this, and she had no way to access the control rooom without taking this specific hallway._ _

__"You're giving up on us," she heard Murphy said. "Please don't give up on us." His voice sounded pleading, almost broken._ _

__She turned back and went to the medical room instead, thinking she could spend some time with her mother until Murphy and Emori were done talking. When she walked in, she saw her mother pacing through the room. She looked frantic, angry and tired._ _

__"Mom?"_ _

__"Clarke! I didn't see you there."_ _

__"Are you ok?"_ _

__Abby froze. She looked at her daughter and then she started crying. A lot. Clarke ran to her. She took her in her arms. Abby was shaking._ _

__"What is it, mom? Talk to me, please."_ _

__But Abby couldn't stop crying, and Clarke didn't know for how long she held her. It could have been ten minutes or an hour. But she didn't stop holding her._ _

__When Abby calmed down a bit, she moved away from her daughter and looked her in the eye._ _

__"I can't do it, Clarke."_ _

__She sounded so tired._ _

__"I didn't sleep since waking up from cryo. I didn't eat. I couldn't. I couldn't stop thinking about Marcus, about how I could save his life. I thought of every possibility, of every operation I could do. But in none of them he survives. He always dies, and he always will. His wounds are too deep. I can't..."_ _

__She started crying again, and she fell on her knees._ _

__Clarke joined her on the ground. She didn't know what to say._ _

__"I-I can't, Clarke. I didn't take any pills since cryo, because I was obsessed... I was obsessed by saving him. But I can't save him. And I don't want to relapse. I don't. I don't."_ _

__"You won't, mom. I'm here, I'll help you. We'll get through it together. I promise you."_ _

__Abby soflty took Clarke's face in her hands._ _

__"I can't. I'm sorry. I was so mad when Jordan told me about Jackson, but maybe Monty and Harper were right. Maybe I should stay in cryo."_ _

__It took a moment for Clarke to understand, but when she did it felt like the room around her was shattering. Her mother was all she had right now. She couldn't not have her. She couldn't be alone._ _

__"Is this really what you want, mom?"_ _

__"It is. I thought about it a lot. I know going into cryo won't heal me. I know it's selfish to leave you, and I hope you'll forgive me. I just don't know how to be your mother anymore. I don't know how to even be myself. I wish..."_ _

__She paused._ _

__"I wish that, maybe, there's something on this moon that can help with my addiction, with Marcus."_ _

__Clarke felt something break inside of her. She felt like she was supposed to cry but she couldn't. She was numbed, and it scared her. But this wasn't her decision to make._ _

__"I get it, mom."_ _

__"Thank you, Clarke. I love you."_ _

__"I love you too."_ _

__They didn't say anything after that, because there wasn't really anything to say. They held each other for a long time. Abby cried. She kissed her on the forehead._ _

__Her mother went back into cryo, and Clarke was left alone._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy the story so far! I know it's a bit slow paced, but I really want to take the time to develop Clarke's dynamic with everyone - and especially her feeling of isolation.


	6. To feel something

Clarke didn't leave the room after putting her mother back into cryo. She sat against a wall for a while, her arms around her knees. She wasn't feeling anything but loneliness. It'd be so easy to wake Madi up, to have her with her. But she couldn't. She'd have to wait. She'd have to stay strong for a little longer. 

She was thinking about going to see Bellamy in the control room when she saw the door opening and Echo walking in. She got up, rubbing at her neck nervously. Echo was the last person she wanted to see right now, and it looked like Echo was feeling the same way as she stopped dead on her tracks when she saw Clarke. 

"What are you doing here?" she asked Clarke, coldly. 

"My mother wanted to get back into cryo," she answered, trying to stay impassive. "I was just about to leave."

She walked towards the door, hoping this would be the end of her interaction with Echo but-

"I suppose I'll have to wake up Miller _and_ Jackson now. We need a doctor." 

Clarke froze, taking her words in. Echo surely didn't take the decision to put Miller out of cryo by herself. It could only mean... 

"Is it Bellamy's decision?"

Echo smiled a little, but it wasn't a pleasant smile. 

"It's everyone's. We make the decisions together, all of us."

Clarke knew right away that Echo was only trying to get to her, but it did hurt anyway. 

"But _I_ wasn't there," she almost whispered. 

"Why would you be, Clarke? We don't need a traitor." 

She shouldn't answer back. She should get the hell out of this room, away from Echo. But she didn't, because she felt angry and she'd rather feel angry than lonely. 

"I only betrayed you to save my child!" she screamed. Why couldn't they understand that Madi was all she had for six years?

"She didn't need saving!" Echo screamed back at her. "You just didn't want her to be the Commander, so you left Bellamy to die in the fighting pits for putting the flame in her head!" 

"And you tried to choke me to death because of it! In front of my daughter!" She paused only for a moment. "Leaving Bellamy behind to die will always be my biggest regret, but do _you_ even feel sorry for almost killing me?"

Echo walked towards Clarke until she could almost touch her. Clarke wanted to take a few steps back, but she didn't want to give Echo the satisfaction. So she stood her ground. 

"I don't," Echo answered, coldly. She suddenly looked bitter. "The great Wanheda, what a joke! They talked about you for six years like you were some king of god, and for what? You don't deserve them. You don't deserve him." 

Clarke's eyes widened, and she took a step back. She felt nauseous as she couldn't stop repeating Echo's words in her head. _You don't deserve them. You don't deserve him._ She wanted to slap her, to keep screaming at her, but she ran out of the room instead. She didn't know where she was going. She just kep running and running. She almost crashed into Jordan at some point, but she she didn't stop. She only stopped when she couldn't breathe anymore. 

While she was catching her breath, she realized she didn't know where she was. She's never been in this part of the ship. It was a narrow corridor barely lighted, with music coming from one of the room at the end of it. 

_Now if you're feeling weary  
If you've been alone too long_

She didn't know this song, but it was catchy. She walked towards the room.

_Maybe you've been suffering from_  
_A too many plans_  
_That have gone wrong_

The door was slightly open. She entered, curious. 

_And you're trying to remember  
How fine your life used to be_

It looked like some kind of lounge, with couches on one side and a pool table on the other. Murphy was sitting on one of the couches, looking drunk. He was staring at what looked like a music player in his right hand, a bottle of alcohol in his left one. 

She tought about leaving him alone, but she couldn't. She was enjoying the idea of getting drunk, of forgetting about everything for a moment. So she joined him, sitting next to him but not to close. 

"Can I get some?" she asked. 

Murphy looked at her.

"Is it your first time?" he teased her. 

"Shut up, Murphy. I can be fun too, sometimes."

She held out her hand, and he passed her the bottle. She took more than a few sips, feeling her throat and her stomach burning a little. It tasted awful, but she didn't care. 

"You may want to take it easy, Clarke. The stuff is pretty strong." 

She looked him in the eye while taking another sip. 

"I know how to hold my liquor. Besides, you're way too drunk already to patronize me."

He laughed. "Fair enough." He glanced at her. "So, what are you drinking for?"

"What are _you_ drinking for?" she challenged him.

"Nothing." He went back looking at his music player, putting on another song. 

She hesitated. Should she tell him about the conversation she heard? 

"I heard you with Emori earlier," she said before she'd change her mind. "I didn't mean to, I swear." 

She saw him flinched. 

"Wanna talk about it? I mean, it's not like I could tell someone else about it," she said tentatively.

For a while, he didn't say anything. He just took the bottle back, taking several sips. 

"She thinks we don't work together, and she wants to stay friends. I told her to fuck off." Clarke found Murphy's reaction a bit harsh, but she didn't risk telling him. 

She was already feeling a bit tipsy, but it wasn't enough. She took the bottle back, drinking while waiting for him to say more.

"She's all I have, and she's all I want." He paused, sounding broken. "I-I know I fucked up in space." Clarke looked at him, intrigued. "I couldn't give her the love she deserved, because I'm an asshole. And now I lost her."

He was looking pretty drunk, and Clarke was sure he wouldn't have told her how he felt if he wasn't. She knew there wasn't anything she could say to make him feel better, so she decided to tell him how she felt instead. There were both lonely, so maybe they could be lonely together. It took her several minutes to find the courage to say it. 

"I lost him."

He looked at her, confused. 

"The moment you all went to space without me, I lost him. I called him on the radio every fucking day for six years, but he never heard me. And now it's too late."

She felt tears falling down her cheek, and it surprised her considering she couldn't cry since her mother told her she wanted to get back into cryo. It may be because she was now drunk, or because she finally told to someone how she felt about Bellamy. 

"We're both screwed." It was all he said. He moved closer, and he took her in his arms. She cried for a while, and maybe he cried too. She calmed down a bit, only to start laughing almost hysterically. 

"What the fuck?" Murphy said.

"It's ri-ridiculous." She was still crying, but only because she was laughing a bit too much. "This. Us."

Murphy smiled. "Yeah, it is." He then laughed, and it was like their relationship shifted suddenly. It's like they realized they could be friends, and they needed to be friends. To talk. To laugh. To drink. To stop feeling lonely for a moment. 

So they talked, and they laughed, and they drank, and they stopped feeling lonely for a moment. Murphy talked about how they escaped Praimfaya, how they nearly died doing so, how they needed time to get used to space, to each other. He talked about the time he almost died after eating Monty's algea, the time Emori got to space walk for the first time. He talked about how they couldn't believe she sacrificied herself to save them in Praimfaya, how they mourned her for a long time. How Bellamy used to stay in his room for weeks. 

"I think he loved you," Murphy said. _Loved_ , not 'loves'. It hurt her, so she changed the subject. 

She talked about how she almost died in the death wave, how she went to the bunker, how lonely she felt after she couldn't get in. How she walked, and she walked, and she almost killed herself. She talked about seeing the valley for the first time, finding Madi. She talked about their six years together, about the stories she told her about them. She talked about how isolated from them she felt.

When she stopped talking, he took her hand and brought her to the pool table. As she was standing up, she realized how drunk she was. She could barely think straight. The room was spinning, but she was feeling good for the first time in a while. She was almost having fun, and she wasn't thinking about _him_. Not really. 

"I don't know how to play," she said.

"I don't either, but I guess we just have to get the balls in the pockets with these sticks." 

They played, and they were bad at it. They were too drunk. Only Clarke put a ball in a pocket, but it wasn't even the ball she was going for. Murphy cheered for her, hugging her. And in this moment, as he was hugging her, she felt something. Not something for him, but something. Like a need. A need to be touched. To touch. To feel someone else. She felt goosebumps all over her body. She knew she should move away from him, but she was too much drunk to take the right decision. 

For a while, Murphy didn't move either. Maybe because he needed to feel someone too. He finally stopped hugging her only so he could put his forehead on hers, and she felt some kind of tension between them. 

"When was the last time you were with someone?" he asked her, almost inaudibly. 

"I don't remember," she answered. 

And then he was kissing her. It wasn't dirty, or romantic. It was the kiss of two people who were drunk, who were feeling lonely, and who needed to feel something else. It wasn't about them. It was about Bellamy. And Emori. It was about the love they lost. 

The kiss deepened. Clarke couldn't stop herself at this point. She wanted more, so she began to take Murphy's pants off. He bumped her into the pool table, closing the distance between them so she could feel his erection. She felt herself blushing while she rubbed herself against him. He moaned loudly. 

He pushed himself harder against her, and she almost came. It was too much and it wasn't enough at the same time. She broke the kiss for a moment, taking her pants off. His eyes darkened. 

He turned her around, so she she was facing the pool table instead of him. He kissed her neck needingly, carressing her breasts under her shirt. Then he slipped a hand in her underwear, and he started to rubb almost furiously at her clit. She felt like she was going to burst. He pinched at her nipple, and she came hard. She thought she might have screamed a little, but she was too drunk to care. 

"Fuck me, please," she said. 

And he did. It was rough, and it was amazing. It made her feel a little more alive.

As he was trusting into her, she imagined he was Bellamy. She knew it was wrong, that she souldn't, but it turned her on so fucking much that she came again.

"Shit," he said, and he came inside her a few moments later. 

He rested his head on her shoulder, breathing loudly, still inside her. They both knew there was nothing between them, and there never will be. They just needed to feel something, and they did. 

Clarke was about to say something when she heard a noise near the door. She turned her head and she saw Bellamy, standing at the entrance of the room. He looked horrified.

"Fuck," Murphy said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, it happened. I'm sorry! But this isn't a 'Clurphy' story, so there isn't anything else but friendship and loneliness between them. 
> 
> The song was the one that played in the first episode of season six. It's called 'This is the sea' by the Waterboys.


	7. Tell me why

Bellamy was staring at them from the doorway, completely horrified. He opened his mouth, closed it, then he left. 

Clarke stumbled away from Murphy, and they both rushed to put their pants on. The room was spinning around her, her thoughts were hazy, and she thought she might throw up at any moment.

"What did we do?" she panicked. "We fucked up. We fucked up bad." She started to shiver from head to toe, so she crossed her arms tightly around herself. Murphy looked at her with concern in his eyes.

"We did nothing wrong, Clarke."

Did they, really? Because it felt to her as if they did everything wrong. 

"We're both consenting adults, aren't we?" he continued. "Drunk, sure, a lot. But I needed this, and I think you did too." 

"But Bellamy...", she whispered more to herself than him. She couldn't remove his expression of horror out of her head.

"Bellamy will get over it. It's not the first time he walks in on people doing it." She frowned, puzzled. "It's not like there was a lot to do in space besides, you know...", he said with a shrug. "And what we did has nothing to do with him."

"It had everything to do with him," she said, her eyes filled with tears. "As it had everything to do with Emori."

"Yeah, we were both grieving a relationship, so what? I'm single, and so are you. We did nothing wrong," he repeated. 

She nodded, knowing he was right. They were drunk and lonely, and they were only seeking for some kind of comfort in each other. But she couldn't stop her heart from hurting. 

"Hey," Murphy told her solftly. "The only mistake we made is not locking the door up." Clarke wondered if he was trying to make her laugh a little.

"I have to go after him," she suddenly decided. Murphy sighed, looking at her as if she was being irrational.

"You're really drunk right now, Clarke. You should sleep it off instead of doing something you might end up regretting."

"I have to. I love him." A few tears fell down her face, and she wiped them off. 

"I know you do, but you're not thinking straight right now. You don't want to wake up in a few hours and realize you told him about the radio calls, do you?"

She didn't, but she wasn't changing her mind and Murphy knew it. 

He shook his head, rolling his eyes in exasperation. "Suit yourself," he said as she was already staggering out of the room. 

It didn't take her long to find Bellamy. He was sitting against a wall in a near hallway, his eyes closed. He had his knees near his chest so he could lean his arms on them. She walked to him, stumbling, and she saw him clenched his jaw as he suddenly looked at her. She didn't hesitate to sit close to him, her right shoulder slightly touching his left one. 

Strands of curly hair were falling on his face, and it made her think of _her_ Bellamy, the one whom hadn't gone to space yet. She noticed how his eyes seemed haunted. They were piercing through hers as if they were desperately searching for something, but couldn't find it.

"You're drunk," he said, and she glanced at his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. It made her weak in her entire body. 

"I am."

His eyes fell on her mouth only for a moment, and he licked his mouth. _Shit_ , she thought, bitting her lip. She was way too drunk to trust herself not to kiss him right now, so she turned her head towards the wall in front of her. She felt his burning stare on her.

"I waited for you in the control room for hours," he whispered, his voice deep and broken. "You never came, so I went looking for you. Jordan told me-" he paused. "I was so fucking worried."

She felt her throat tighten as she remembered Echo's words. _You don't deserve him_. 

"But I shouldn't have bothered," he added angrily. Clarke turned to him, but he wasn't looking at her anymore. He had his eyes closed. His jaw was clenched, and so were his hands.

There was a moment of silence. _I slept with Murphy because I was hurt and lonely_ , she wanted to tell him. _Because I love you, but I can't have you._

He finally broke the silence. "Here," he said coldly. He shoved on her a sketchbook and a box of colored pencils. "It was in one of the bedroom. I thought you'd like it, and that maybe it could replace the one you had in Shadow Valley. I removed the pages that were used, and..." He didn't finish his sentence, so Clarke took the sketchbook and opened it.

He had written something on the first page. _To Clarke_. 

She was speechless for a moment. 

"Thank you," she said sincerely while looking at the box of pencils. She'd never drawn with colors before, but she couldn't wait to do so. 

She reached for his hand, but he removed it almost instantly.

"Yeah, you're welcome." He got up, barely looking at her before starting to walk away. 

She knew it was because of the alcohol running through her veins, but she felt a bit reckless. She put the sketchbook and the box of pencils on the ground, and she got up.

"Are you mad at me?" she asked. She was leaning against the wall, trying to keep her balance.

He stopped walking, but he kept his back on her. He didn't say anything, didn't move, so it made her angry. 

"You don't get to be mad at me for sleeping with Murphy!" she said loudly. He finally turned to her, looking taken aback, his eyes wide and hurt. "Why would you be mad anyway, huh?"

"Because I-" he began, but he didn't say more. He looked distraught, as if he was just realizing something. "Shit, I-" He ran his hand through his hair, at loss for words.

Before she could stop herself from doing so, she walked to him. She softly put her hand on his cheek, her eyes lingering on his. They were so close to each other, she could feel his breath on her face. She felt him shiver a little. 

"Tell me why it bothers you," she pleaded him. When she ran after him, she didn't expect to find him looking a bit broken. And she didn't expect for him to be mad at her for sleeping with Murphy, because why would he be if he was not in love with her? 

He looked at her in a way she couldn't decipher. "You're drunk, Clarke. It's better if I get you back to your room."

She removed her hand, taking a step back. 

"Of course, you won't talk to me!" Her voice was filled with sadness. "You don't talk to me anymore! You barely look at me, and when you do I only see a stranger. Us-", she pointed to the both of them, "how do you even feel about us? Would it have been better if I had died in Praimfaya like you thought I did?" She was pissed now. "Maybe I should have died, so I wouldn't be a burden to you!"

He looked surprised by her words. "Clarke-" 

"Don't! I don't want to hear it, Bellamy."

He took a step forward, so she took another step back. "Clarke, I-"

She heard someone coming closer, and Bellamy took a look behind her shoulder. He frowned his eyes. 

Murphy joined them, worried.

"Are you ok?" he asked her, but she couldn't find the strenght to answer him. "How about we get you to bed?" 

"I won't let her go with _you_ ," Bellamy said before she could say something. He looked as if he was about to punch Murphy.

"What is wrong with _me_ especially, huh?" Murphy challenged him. 

"It's not-" Bellamy began to reply. His eyes were furiously alterning between Murphy and her. "I-I just can't believe you cheated on Emori!" 

Clarke's eyes widened with hurt. _Is this why he reacted the way he did? Because he thought Murphy was cheating?_ She suddenly felt nauseous, so she closed her eyes. 

"I didn't. We broke up," Murphy said.

"So what, you two are together now?"

Murphy laughed bitterly. "Why would _you_ even care?" 

Bellamy didn't answer. 

Clarke still felt nauseous, but she quickly realized it wasn't because of Bellamy. It was because she drank too much, and it was keeping up to her. She stumbled, putting her weight on Murphy to stop herself from falling.

"I-I don't feel good," she said. "And I think I'm gonna throw up." She instantly felt Bellamy's hand on her foreharm. She knew it was his even with her eyes closed. 

"I'll take you to the bathroom," she heard him say.

"The hell you will!" Murphy told Bellamy, sounding drunk and angry. " _I_ will take care of her, and _you_ will go get your shit together." He paused. "What the fuck, Bellamy? Do you even know how much she-" Murphy didn't finish his sentence, and Clarke was grateful for it. 

Bellamy didn't say anything else.

"My sketchbook," she said to Murphy. 

She tried to open her eyes, but everything was spinning so she kept them closed. Murphy let go of her for a moment only to pick up the stuff Bellamy gave her, then he helped her get to the bathroom. He held her hair when she threw up. He helped her brush her teeth, drink some water, and get into her bed. 

He sat on the ground, his back against the bed. 

"He's in love with you," he told her after a moment. "But I think he doesn't know-" 

But she didn't want to talk about Bellamy, so she cut him. "Thank you", she said. "For taking care of me." 

Then she fell asleep.


	8. Please come home

_Bellamy, are you as excited as I am? It's been five years today, and I can't wait for you to come back. You'll love Shadow Valley, it's everything we ever dreamed of for our people. It's beautiful, and quiet, and safe, and it always smells of wild flowers._

_Madi's pretty excited too. She even insisted a few weeks ago to prepare the village by herself for your arrival. She cleaned the houses, and she washed the sheets in the bedrooms. She made sure everything would be perfect._

_She's been looking at the sky since she woke up this morning, and I've been too. Where are you, Bellamy? I thought you'd be here already, because I can only imagine how much you can't wait to reunite with Octavia._

_We still haven't thought of a way to get them out of the bunker, but I'm sure we will. There's always a way._

_I have to admit that I didn't sleep well last night. I was... anxious. Because of you. Because of us. Because of what could have been, and because of what could be now that you're coming home._

_It's been five years, and I still miss you as much as I did the moment I realized I wasn't getting back in time to Becca's lab. To you._

_I miss you so fucking much, it hurts. Do you miss me sometimes?_

_Do you think about us?_

_Madi thinks you loved me, is it true? She thinks you did things for me that you wouldn't have done for anyone else._

_There's so much I would do differently, you know, but I think my biggest regret is having kept myself away from you for all these months. Sure, I loved Finn. And I loved Lexa too. But I always thought there was something different with the two of us. I can't say what exactly, but it's like we were always completing each other._

_I knew I could always count on you, that you would never give up on me. And if I'm really honest with myself, I think Madi's right. I think you did things for me that you wouldn't have done for anyone else._

_I think you were willing to risk everything to keep me safe._

_I should have- I'm sorry, Bellamy, for not... Shit._

_I was afraid of only accepting how I truly felt about you. I was afraid to feel it, to say it. Everyone I loved died, and I couldn't lose you. Not you. You were too important, and you still are. I suppose you'll always be._

_But I lost you anyway, didn't I? You found the strenght in you to leave me behind to die, and you went to space without knowing how important you were to me. It's been five years, so I suppose you moved on. Why wouldn't you?_

_You thought I died in Praimfaya. There's no point in loving a ghost._

_I can't help but wonder for how long you mourned me, for how long you felt guilty for leaving without me. A selfish part of me wishes that you were haunted by me for a long time, and that you still are, but another part of me can't bare the thought of you hurting._

_So, yeah. anyway, I was afraid to tell you how I felt._

_But I'm not anymore._

_Bellamy, I'm waiting for you._

_Please come home._

_I have something to tell you._

 

Clarke woke up laying on her side. Her head was hurting, her mouth was dry, her thoughts were fuzzy, and she didn't have a clue as to why she was in her bed. _What the hell happened?_ she asked herself. 

She slowly turned on her back, looking at the blue ceiling of the bedroom. She thought of the dream she was having a few moments ago. How many times had she looked at the sky, that day, hoping to see the dropship? Hoping to see Bellamy?

How many times had she kept looking the days after, and the days after them. She never stopped looking, and she never stopped hoping that she could finally tell him how she felt. 

_Shit_ , she thought, suddenly remembering the horror on Bellamy's face. _Shit, shit, shit._ She fucking slept with Murphy. She couldn't believe it. _Murphy_ , really? She must have been pretty drunk. 

She pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes. Did she felt something for Murphy at some point? Could that be why she slept with him? 

She tried to recall how it happened, but it was a bit blurred.

She remembered them talking, laughing, and drinking. She remembered how good it felt to have someone to confide in about her feelings for Bellamy, how they were both longing to forget how lonely they were. 

She remembered them kissing and... 

She blushed, thinking of how she needed to feel someone and of how amazing it felt after six years alone. Feeling someone's lips on hers, someone's hands on breasts. Feeling someone inside her. It was amazing, but it wasn't amazing because it was Murphy. 

She sighed, relieved, when she realized she wasn't feeling anything for Murphy, and that she was still very much in love with Bellamy. She couldn't help herself but laugh bitterly at that. Being in love with Bellamy was an everyday torture for her, and she never thought she would one day be relieved to feel this way about him. 

She couldn't help but get the impression that something dramatic happened between Bellamy and her, but she couldn't recall anything after deciding to go after him, and it scared her. Did she tell him about how she felt? She shivered, praying really hard that she did not. 

_I have to talk to Murphy_ , she thought. Not only about Bellamy, but also about the two of them sleeping together.

So she got up, picked up some fresh clothes in the dresser, walked to the bathroom and took a shower. Once she was done, she went to the dining room to grab a bowl of algea before searching for Murphy. She only ate one bowl since waking up from cryo, and she needed to eat a lot more than that to be ready for tomorrow's landing. 

Jordan was in the dining room, alone, so she served herself a bowl of algea and walked to him.

"Hey," she said, with a little smile, while sitting in front of him. 

His face brightened up. "Clarke! I'm so happy to see you!"

Even if he was older than her by a few years, Clarke noticed how young he appeared. There was an innocence in his eyes, the light of someone whom hasn't experience anything traumatic yet. His smile was nothing but hopeful, waiting only for good things to come. 

He was greeting her with such pure happiness, with his arms and heart wide open as if they've been close friends for a really long time. And in this sense, it made Clarke conscious of how different the both of them were. She'd gotten so used of feeling lonely, even before Praimfaya, that she was having a hard them letting people in. 

She tried to smile a little more genuinely. "I am too. I wanted to talk to you for a moment-"

"Is this because of Abby?" he asked apprehensively. "I heard she went back into cryo. I'm so sorry, Clarke. I didn't want to upset her..."

She shook her head. "It's fine. It's not your fault, Jordan. She just wasn't sure she could stop herself from relapsing, so she thought it'd be better if she..." She smiled sadly, her eyes clouded, trying to hide how hurt she was to not have her mother with her anymore. "It's better this way."

Jordan nodded, his eyes filled with tears. "I suppose we both kind of lost our parents recently, didn't we?" 

There was a brief moment of silence, as they both contemplated their respective loss. 

"I miss them too, you know, Monty and Harper," Clarke said. "I wished I had more time to talk to them before going into cryo."

She remembered when she and Bellamy manipulated Monty to help them killing Kara, and she felt her throat tighten, feeling ashamed. 

"They never forgot what you did for them, you know. The six years they spent together in space, they were so happy. They only wanted to feel this way again." His eyes were filled with so much love for his parents. "And they talked about you, all of you, a lot. Especially about Bellamy and you, because they thought you perfectly completed each other. That's why they woke you up both before anyone else. They knew how hard it was for Bellamy to leave you behind, and how hard it must have been for you to sacrifice yourself so they could live, so I think they kinda wanted to give you guys the opportunity to pick up where you left." 

Clarke felt as if her heart didn't only skip a couple beats, but as if it had just stopped working. She waited for Bellamy to come back for six years only so they could pick up where they left. She had imagined a million different ways to tell him about her feelings, but she didn't expect him to be in love with someone else. 

When Bellamy came to see her after saving her from Dioza in Shadow Valley, and when he so softly hugged her, she couldn't help but think of how different he not only looked but felt. It wasn't only the beard, it was also his eyes. The raw emotion she used to love to see in them was tamed, almost faded. So, she didn't tell him about her feelings. 

And then, a couple days later, when she was slowly gathering the strenght to tell him, she saw him with Echo, kissing her, relieved to be reunited with her. Her heart shattered and, even if he had finally came back to Earth, she felt more lonely than she ever did the six years he was in space.

"I grew on stories about all of you," Jordan continued. "That's all I've ever known, so I grew up feeling as if you were all _my_ friends, and as if _I_ went on all these crazy adventures with you." He paused, looking a bit happier. "And I can't wait to land on the moon tomorrow, it's going to be a wild adventure."

Clarke frowned a little, worried by Jordan's words. "You know it wasn't all good what we went through since the moment we were sent to the ground. I don't want for you to think nothing bad could happen on the moon. We don't know what's waiting for us down there." 

"I know, I'm not _that_ clueless. My parents talked a lot about the bad stuff too. I just-" he paused, looking hesitant. "I guess I'm just happy to get to be with all of you." He was looking at her with such sincerity, and admiration, that Clarke felt her heart sting a little. 

They talked for a while, getting to know each other. Jordan told her about the stories his parents used to tell him, and Clarke told him about the stories she used to tell Madi. 

"I just can't wait for you to meet Madi," she said only a moment before Murphy walked in.

He went straight to them. 

"Clarke," he said. "I've been looking for you. We should talk about, you know..." he gave her a meaningful look, and he glanced at Jordan as if he'd just realized he was there. "Hey, Jordan. What's up?"

Jordan stared at the both of them for a moment, looking as if he was trying to decipher what was going on. "Oh!" he exclamed. "You guys want to be left alone?" 

Murphy smiled at his reaction, giving him a gentle pat on the shoulder. "Yeah, man. It's not that I don't want to see you, but I really need to be alone with Clarke."

"I get it." Jordan replied. "Don't worry." We winked at them then he left the room, whistling happily. 

Clarke and Murphy looked at each other for a moment, then they bursted out laughing. 

"Does he think there's something romantic going on between the two of us, or...?" Clarke asked.

"I think he does", Murphy said. "The guy is clueless, but I like him."

"I do too. He reminds me so much of them in a way." 

"Yeah." Murphy's eyes were briefly filled with nostalgia, but he blinked and it went away.

He sat in front of her, where Jordan was a moment ago. They both looked awkwardly at each other for a moment, neither of them daring to talk first. 

"So", Murphy said, breaking the silence. "We slept together."

"We did." 

There was another silence. Clarke glanced at him, suddenly nervous. Murphy was looking nervous too, and she hoped it wasn't because he had some kind of feelings for her that she wasn't aware of. She opened her mouth to say something, but didn't know what to so she waited for him to talk. 

"We talked a lot."

"We did."

"We were a mess."

"We were."

"We had fun though."

"We did."

Murphy frowned his eyebrows, looking only more nervous. "Don't you wanna talk about what happened, or-"

"I do, I just-" 

"Because it doesn't look like you do, you keep repeating-"

"I do, I swear. I-"

They stopped talking for a moment, unsure of how to interact with each other. 

"You're making me nervous right now, Clarke."

"I'm sorry, it wasn't my intention, but you're making me nervous too."

Murphy looked as if he was about to have a heart attack. "Ok, I think I need to be pretty straightforward here, because it looks like we could be at it for a while. I thought we were on the same page, but now I'm beginning to doubt it and I need to make things clear." Clarke's eyes widened, but he didn't let her the chance to reply. "I was drunk, and lonely, and heartbroken, and, if I remember correctly, I think you were too. I needed to get my mind off of Emori, and you were there. You needed to get your mind off of Bellamy, and I was there. It felt good, really, and I don't regret it, but I only like you as a friend. Nothing more, not even some kind of friendship with benefits, only a friend." He caught his breath, waiting nervously for her to answer. 

"Murphy, I feel the same way." 

He looked at her with the same relief as her in his eyes. "I think my heart skipped a beat or two for a moment as I started to wonder if Jordan had seen something between us that I didn't." He paused. "I'm glad we are feeling the same way, because I really could use a friend right now. Raven spends all her time with Shaw, and I've barely seen Bellamy since waking up from cryo."

Clarke realized how much it must have cost Murphy to be this honest with her about his feelings, and it felt to her as if he was downplaying his desire for a friendship so he could protect himself if she didn't want the same. "I could use a friend too." She smiled, feeling a little less lonely. It's been such a long time since she had one. "And, let's be honest, it's not like I can get to be picky about my friends these days", she teased him. 

He rolled his eyes, but he smiled. "You're a bit of an asshole yourself, you know that?" 

"Yeah, but I guess we'll get along pretty well." She winced at him. "And I have to admit that I'd lie if I said that sleeping with you wasn't the last thing I expected to do in my life."

He laughed genuinely. "Fair enough, Griffin." 

He smirked at her, then they started to talk about pretty normal things for a while. Murphy seemed disgusted by the fact that he had to dry a lot of algea for them to bring on the moon. "I fucking hope there's something else to eat on that moon, because I'm not spending another year anywhere near this green vomit." 

And as they were talking, Clarke wanted to ask him about Bellamy, but she couldn't bring herself to do so. She was afraid of what he might reveal to her, but she finally found the courage she needed. "Murphy, I'd like to ask you about Bellamy."

He looked at her seriously. "Yeah, you know, now that I think about it I've always felt some tension between the two of you before Praimfaya. I-"

"It's not what I want to talk about," she cut him. "Do you- Do you remember anything after he walked in on us?"

"I don't-" he paused, puzzled, trying to recall the events. 

"It's just that I remember going after him, but that's it. I don't remember if I said something to him and it's been giving me a lot of anxiety since I woke up." 

"I was so drunk, Clarke, everything is blurred. Before you said so, I didn't even remember that he walked in on us." He frowned, thinking. "But now, I do remember watching you going after him even if I strongly advised you not to", he gave her a look, "but, after, I'm not sure." He took a long moment to think. "I heard you scream at him at some point, so I went to see if everything was alright. I think Bellamy was pissed, and I think I was too, but I don't remember why. And you weren't feeling well, so I helped you get back to your room. But that's about it." 

She she must be looking pretty upset, because he put his hand on hers. 

"I'm sorry, Clarke." He seemed sincere, as if he really wanted to provide her with more informations. "I know how much complicated things are between the both of you right now."

"They are. I just-" she paused, "I just don't know who he is anymore. What happened to him in space, Murphy?"

His mood seemed to suddenly darken, and he looked uncomfortable. "Bellamy had a pretty hard time in the first few months. I think- I think he loved you and he never forgave himself for leaving you behind. He stayed in his room for weeks, and then... then he just changed." 

"But how-"

"I'm sorry, Clarke, but I really don't think I should be the one to talk about what happened to Bellamy. _He_ should be the one to tell you." Clarke nodded. "And he will tell you one day, I'm sure he-" But he didn't finish his sentence. 

Clarke felt him getting tense as he looked behind her shoulder. She immediatly knew there was someone watching them from the hallway, and she couldn't believe their bad luck. Twice, really? At least, they had their clothes on them this time. 

"You've got to be kidding me," Murphy said for only her to hear. "I can't believe the shitty timing we have." He quickly removed his hand from hers. 

Clarke sighed, turning towards the doorway, and she saw Emori standing there, confused. She expected her to leave, as Bellamy did, but she walked to them instead. 

"Well, I guess it's true then," she said bitterly. 

Murphy stood up abrubtly. "What is? It's not-" 

"I ran into Jordan a few minutes ago, and he started to talk to me with the assumption that we weren't together anymore, John. The point is, I didn't tell anyone about our break up yet, and I'm pretty sure you didn't either."

Clarke knew where this was going, and she wondered if she should leave them alone. She got up, but before she could start to walk away...

"Stay", Emori told her firmly, then she got her attention back to Murphy. "I asked him why he assumed we were broken up, and he mumbled something about the both of you needing to be alone in the dining room before running away, embarrassed. So, here I am, in the dining room, finding the both of you alone, holding hands."

"Emori, it's not what you think," Clarke said tentatively. 

"Isn't it? Because I don't recall John putting his hand on anyone else's than mine. So, enlight me, Clarke." 

She glanced at Murphy. He seemed frozen, looking as if he was about to faint. 

"We're friends, that's it," Clarke told her sincerely. Emori raised an eyebrow. "I'm having a hard time right now, and Murphy was just helping me."

She knew she wasn't lying to Emori, but she wasn't telling her the truth either. She just felt as if it wasn't her call to make, it was Murphy's, but he looked like he couldn't remember how to talk. So, she was trying to buy him some time. 

"Is it true, John?" Emori looked at him, perplexed. "I know you, and right now I can't help but think there's something you're not telling me. You look like you're about to throw up or faint, I can't decide between the both." 

He closed his eyes only for a moment, and Clarke knew right away that he was going to tell her the truth. She expected him to tell her they were drunk or something like that but, when he opened his eyes, there was a light in them that made her think of the Murphy whom was just send to the ground. The Murphy whom was mean, and bitter, and selfish, but who was only this way to protect himself from getting hurt by others. 

"Not that it's any of _your_ business since _you_ left me, but Clarke and I slept together," Murphy said nastily. Emori's eyes widened, but Clarke didn't know if it was because she was hurt or because she was surprised by this turn of events. 

Then, there was a long moment of pure tension between the two of them, and Clarke didn't know what to do with herself. Because Murphy and Emori looked as if they were about to rip each other's head off, or maybe as if they were about to rip each other's clothes? She couldn't tell, and it made her really uncomfortable. 

After what seemed to be an eternity, Emori was the first one to flinch. 

"Fine," she said. "I suppose we just have to tell the others that we broke up, and that you're now with Clarke." She raised an eyebrow, challenging him. 

He didn't answer, so she started to walk away. 

"Emori, we're not-" Clarke tried to hold her back, but she was already out of the room. She turned to Murphy, furious. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Murphy, huh? You could have told her that this was a one time thing, or-" But, the moment she glanced at him and realized how broken he looked, she could only feel bad for him, so she stopped yelling.

"I'm sorry, Clarke. I don't know why I-" he took his face in his hands. "Shit!" 

But she knew why he did it. He was only trying to protect his feelings, he wanted to hurt Emori as much as she hurt him, but it backfired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's only a chapter left before they land on the moon!
> 
> Clarke's dynamic with Murphy takes a lot of place in the story right now, because I think Murphy's character is the perfect one to help her finally go for what she wants (Bellamy!). But I need to build their friendship before.
> 
> So, don't worry! Bellamy's going to be more and more in the story as it progresses. But as to right now, I think it's very telling of how much of a stranger he's become to Clarke. She waited six years for someone that never really came back, so she needs to find a new beat with him (and she also needs to understand what happened to him in space that made him repress so much of who he was).
> 
> Finally, thank you all for reading! And thank you for the feedback, I'm always grateful for it :)


	9. A stranger to you

"Murphy, you need to go after her," she told him gently. "I know you're hurt, that you only reacted the way you did to protect yourself, but she didn't broke up with you to _hurt_ you." His eyes met hers, and she only saw fear in them. 

She remembered when she joined Murphy in the lounge, sitting next to him. He was already drunk, looking haunted by Emori's decision to break things up with him. _I know I fucked up in space, he had told her. I couldn't give her the love she deserved, because I'm an asshole._ She didn't know what happened between them while they were in space, but she could assumed it had to do with his inability to show vulnerability to others. Even if she knew that he changed a lot since he was sent to the ground, that he was making more and more efforts to let people in, it appeared to her that he still couldn't handle the feeling of rejection. He'd rather lash out to people, hurt them before they could hurt him more. _She thinks we don't work together, and she wants to stay friends. I told her to fuck off._ He really needed to be honest with Emori about his feelings before he could lose her completely.

"She deserves better than to be treated the way you did, she deserves the truth, _your_ truth." Murphy raised an eyebrow in confusion, so she shared more of her thoughts. "You need to tell her how you feel about her, about what happened in space, and about what happened yesterday."

He shook his head vehemently. "I'm not doing that."

"Why wouldn't you?" 

"I said I'm not doing that, Clarke. I'd rather let her tell everyone about us sleeping together."

Her eyes widened, a little surpised by Murphy's words. She wasn't ashamed of what the both of them did, but it didn't mean she was ready for everyone to know. She didn't even get to talk to Bellamy since it happened. "You can't-"

"I don't want to go after her, and I won't." He sounded annoyed, even a little pissed.

"And what about what _I_ want, Murphy?" He looked taken aback for a moment, and she didn't let him the chance to reply. "You made a mess here, and you need to clean it up! You need to be honest with her!"

"As _you_ are with Bellamy, huh?" He was clearly pissed at her right now, but he seemed to regret his words as soon as he said them. 

She took a step back from him, feeling hurt, but a part of herself knew he wasn't wrong to point out her hypocrisy right now. 

"I'm sorry, Clarke, I-"

"No, you're right. I can't ask for you to be honest with Emori if I can't do the same with Bellamy."

"It's not what I meant. I was just pissed at you because you are right. Emori and I, it's not the same as Bellamy and you. I owe her the truth, but you don't owe him anything considering..."

He didn't need to finish his sentence for Clarke to understand where he was going. Bellamy and her never were together. She didn't owe him to be honest about her feelings, and he didn't owe her to be honest about his - _not that he has any feelings for me right now_ , she thought, _because he's with Echo, and he's in love with her._

"I don't want for you to get hurt because of what I did", Murphy told her after a moment. "If I did, I wouldn't even have been a good friend for more than, what, an hour?" She laughed a little. "I'm going to talk to Emori. I'm not sure I'm ready to be completely honest with her about my issues, because I clearly have a lot of them, but I can explain to her what's going on between you and I", he paused, "or rather what's _not_ going on."

She nodded, and he walked out of the room. She sighed, thinking about Bellamy. _As you are with Bellamy, huh?_ Yeah, maybe she needed to be honest with him, to tell him how she felt about him, about the two of them. It would be embarrassing, because her feelings were not reprocicated, but it would be a relief too. She could tell him and finally move on.

 _Am I really doing this?_ she thought nervously. She paced around the room for more than ten minutes, undecided. _Come on, Clarke. You can't start new on the moon if you bring with you all these feelings that are hurting you. You need to let go, you need to let him be with her._ So she walked out of the room and went to the control room, assuming he would be there, and he was. The only thing was, Raven and Echo were also there.

"You can't make me stay, Bellamy!" Raven was saying, loudly and furiously. "I'm not going to sit around in here while you all get to explore the moon!" No one had realized yet that she was in the doorway. "It's not fair that Clarke gets to be part of the trip and I don't!"

"Raven, that's enough," Bellamy told her firmly. "You made your point, but-"

"Are you _still_ going to defend her, really? When are you going to understand that she's not the Clarke you left behind anymore, Bellamy? She's a burden. She left you to die in the fighting pits for doing what was right, and she betrayed us! Shaw and I were tortured because of her! She almost got us all killed! If it wasn't for her, we could have prevented the destruction of Shadow Valley! Monty and Harper would still be alive!" Her voice broke when she pronounced their name. "How is she not in cryo right now?" Raven caught her breath, looking relieved as if she'd been waiting a long time to say this outloud.

"Raven, I-" Clarke didn't know how to react. She felt numbed, and it remembered her of when she had just put her mother back into cryo. _Monty and Harper would still be alive!_ Is that why Raven was _this_ angry with her, why she couldn't forgive her? 

The three of them turned to her, shocked to see her, and no one talked for a while. Bellamy had his eyes glued on her, and she wondered if he was even blinking. Echo was staring at her coldly, but she mainly stayed impassive. Clarke couldn't help but notice how close to each other they were, and she felt her heart sting.

Raven, as for her, was glaring at Clarke as if she had daggers in her eyes which she was ready to use.

"Clarke," she said bitterly. "I didn't intend for you to hear this, but I suppose now you know how I really feel."

"I'm sorry, Raven, I-"

"I don't want to hear it, Clarke! You're always sorry, but I've had enough! I'm not doing this anymore! I'm not going to pretend that everything's fine because you did what you thought you had to!"

"Raven-"

But Raven sighed, rolling her eyes, and she walked past her out of the room. She felt a knot in her stomach, and she glanced at Bellamy and Echo, uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, I don't-" and she quickly walked away too, not knowing if she was more shaken by what Raven just said or by seeing the two of them together. 

"Clarke, wait!" She felt Bellamy softly grabbing her forearm, lightly rubbing his thumb against it, and it gave her goosebumps. 

She slowly turned to him, noticing how his eyes seemed darker than she remembered them to be. He let his hand on her forearm, giving her a hard time to breathe. His hand was warm, and big, and calloused on her skin.

"I don't want to talk about Raven," she whispered. 

"It's not what-"

"What is it then?" she asked a little drily, trying to ignore Echo's cold stare on them from the control room. 

"I just- I just thought I should let you know that there's going to be a meeting in two hours in the control room. You should be there, we're going to make sure everyone's ready for the landing." 

"I'll be there." She wondered if she should ask him for a private talk after the meeting, so she could tell him about her feelings. "Bellamy, I-"

"Do you like it?" he asked at the same moment she started to talk. His eyes were suddenly shinning, but she couldn't tell if it was of happiness or sadness.

"Do I like what?" 

He frowned, seeming confused. "The sketchbook I gave you."

She wasn't aware of any sketchbook. "When did you- Oh!" She realized he must have given it to her after she slept with Murphy, when she went after him. She immediatly felt nervous. "I'm sorry, I was really drunk last night and there's a lot I don't remember." 

"You don't-" Bellamy was staring at her deeply, his mouth a little open. "You don't remember us talking?" 

"I don't, I'm sorry. I hope I didn't-" 

"Bellamy?" It was Echo, and she was walking towards them. "We should go eat something before the meeting," she said without looking at Clarke. 

"We should," he replied to her absently. He was still staring deeply at Clarke, his hand on her forearm burning her skin.

"Let's go then." Echo took him by the the other hand, and it seemed to push him out of his trance. He blinked at Clarke for a moment, then he left with Echo. 

She leaned on the nearest wall, trying to regain her senses. Being so close to Bellamy, his deep stare, his hand on her skin, it left her breathless. 

She sighed, suddenly thinking of Raven, and she walked to her room without paying attention to her surrounding. _How is she not into cryo right now? Shaw and I were tortured because of her! She's not the Clarke you left behind anymore, Bellamy! You're always sorry, but I've had enough!_ She couldn't get Raven's words out of her head and it was making her crazy.

She had just closed to door to her room when someone knocked, and it startled her. 

"Clarke?" It was Murphy. "I just saw you walking in, and- Can I come in?" She opened the door, letting him inside. "Is everything alright? he asked her, his eyebrows a little frowned. "You seem concerned. If it's about Emori telling everyone, I convinced her not to-"

"It's not. I just- I just had a tense discussion with Raven. Well, it wasn't really a discussion... more Raven screaming about how much she resents me for everything that is wrong, even Monty and Harper's death." She sat on her bed, crossing her arms aroung her knees to make herself feel safer "I get it, really. I screwed up, I- I couldn't lose Madi, I couldn't risk anything bad happening to her, and I didn't think of anything else. I was wrong to do so, but she was all I had for six years, and she was all I had even after you all came back from space." She felt her eyes fill with tears, but it wasn't of sadness. It was of anger, and pain, and loneliness. "I sacrificed myself so my friends could go to space, and they came back as a family. I couldn't go back to the bunker, to my mom, and I can't help but feel that she now loves Kane more than she loves me. She fucking asked me to put her back into cryo because she couldn't stop herself from relapsing without Kane's help! She- She didn't want _my_ help, she didn't need it. I-", she started to sob, unable to control herself. "Madi was _my_ family, Murphy. I couldn't lose her. I-I couldn't, and now I'm alone." She furiously wiped her tears. "I just can't take it anymore! I apologized, but it's not enough! It's never enough!" She suddenly stood up, pacing around the room, her fingers clenching at nothing.

"Clarke-" Murphy was staring at her worringly, looking as if he wanted to hug her but wasn't sure it was approriate. He did it anyway, and it was a little weird for a moment. They were never really close friends before, and they never hugged without being drunk. "You're not alone. I'm here, and I'm sure Raven will come around. She just needs some time, that's all. If she could forgive me for shooting her, I don't see why she couldn't forgive you for protecting the only person you had for six years."

"Why did _you_ forgive me? I didn't even apologized to you."

"I just- I saw how everyone was treating you after everything went down and, when I saw you for the first time after waking up from cryo, I thought -" he paused for a moment, "I know what it's like to be alone, to feel lonely, and to feel as if no one wants you." She nodded, remembering when Murphy was wrongly accused of killing Wells, when he was hanged, and banished. "And Emori knows too, so she was never angry at you for betraying us." She stayed silent, so he continued. "Not _everyone_ is angry at you right now."

She moved away from him. "Thank you."

Then, she changed the subject, asking him what happened with Emori after he left the dining room. 

"I apologized to her for being rude, and I told her we only slept together because we were both drunk and lonely. That it was a one time thing, and that we were just friends." He suddenly looked sad, and hurt. "I told her I love her."

"What did she say?"

"She- She said she was pissed because she couldn't believe that I would sleep with someone else only hours after our break up. But-", he paused, trying to find his words. "But she quickly realized after leaving us in the dining room that I did nothing wrong precisely _because_ we were broken up, so, yeah, it looks like she's not in love with me anymore." His voice broke a little. "She hopes we could be friends, and I didn't tell her to fuck off this time. I told her I would need to think about it."

"I'm sorry, Murphy, I really am."

"It just sucks."

"I know, I-"

"Did you get to see Bellamy?" he suddenly cut her. "I haven't got to see him since, you know..." He looked at her curiously, but she could still see sadness in his eyes. She quickly understood he didn't want to talk about Emori anymore.

"I did, and he- Do you remember anything about a sketchbook?" she asked. 

He thought about it for a moment, then his eyes lightened up. He went to the desk, searching for something under the clothes loosely piled on it. 

"Here." He held her a sketchbook with a navy blue cover. 

She opened it. _To Clarke_ was written on the first page, and she immediatly recognized Bellamy's writing. She softly rubbed her thumb on it. 

"Murphy, I need you to be honest with me."

"Sure, Clarke, ask away."

She took a deep breath. "You said- You think that Bellamy loved me before going to space, and that he still loved me for a while after. Do you think he could still be in love with me?" 

Murphy looked at her with a glimpse of pity, and she knew right away that he couldn't give her the answer she wanted to hear. Because it wasn't the truth.

"It's hard to say. He's been with Echo for more than three years, and I think he really loves her. I think she helped him a lot to deal with... losing you."

She nodded, feeling her throat tighten. The way Bellamy looked at her earlier, and now the sketchbook... It made her feel a little hopeful, and she wanted to be sure he didn't love her anymore before moving on. 

"I'm sorry. I know it's not what you wanted to hear."

"It's fine." She put the sketchbook on the desk, and sat on the edge of the bed.

"How about I go find some _delicious_ algea so we can eat in here before going to the meeting, huh?" he asked her. 

"Sounds good." 

Murphy walked out of the room, leaving her alone with her thoughts. She wondered what she was going to tell Bellamy, and how she was going to tell him. She needed him to understand why she was acting a little awkward around him lately, and she needed him to know that she wanted for them to be friends. Because she didn't want to lose him completely, so she was willing to be just that, friends. 

Murphy came back after a little while, two bols of algea in his hands. He gave her one, sitting on the edge of the bed with her, and Clarke noticed that he seemed troubled. "Are you alright?" 

He shrugged. "I just saw Bellamy in the dining room, but he avoided me." 

"Do you think it's because of what we did?" she asked, perplexed. 

Murphy's eyes suddenly widened a little as if he just remembered something but, if he did, he didn't say what it was. He kept silent, looking thoughtful. So Clarke asked him about what he thought they would find on the moon tomorrow. 

"Aliens would be cool." He smirked.

She rolled her eyes, but it made her laugh. They spent the time left before the meeting in her room, talking, then they walked to the control room. Everyone was already there and, when they walked in together, they all briefly looked at them with confusion. No one knew they slept together - at the exception of Bellamy and Emori -, no one knew they were now friends, so it surely was surprising to see them walking in _together_. 

Clarke noticed how Emori's eyes were impassive, and she also noticed how Bellamy's were not. His eyes were alterning between the two of them, more frowned that she thought was possible. 

Bellamy clenched his jaw. "So, now that everyone is here, we can talk about the landing." He finally looked away from them. "Raven and Jordan will stay on the ship."

Clarke glanced at Raven. It was evident that she still wasn't pleased with the decision, because she looked pretty pissed. Jordan, on the other hand, only looked defeated. Clarke felt bad for him. She knew how much he wanted to go on the moon, to finally live an adventure on his own, but she could understand the decision to let him on the ship. He was a little naive, and childlike, and it was risky to bring him when they didn't know what they would face down there. 

"Shaw will pilot the transport ship," Bellamy continued. "He will get us on the moon, then he will get back to the ship. We don't know what's on this moon, and we can't take the risk to lose the only transport ship we have. We'll bring radios with us, so we can communicate with the ship if we need them to come get us." He paused. "If we go on the moon, we accept the risk that we may never come back on the ship. We don't know what's down there, we don't know if there are people alive. Our priority is to make sure the moon is safe for our people to join us, and we cannot risk for something to happen to the transport ship or to the ship itself. If comes a situation where we have to make the choice between protecting ourselves or the transport ship, our people, we need - we have - to be ready to sacrifice ourselves. Does everyone understand that?"

Bellamy looked at each one of them, his eyes lingering a little longer on Clarke's. 

"If someone isn't ready to make that choice, it's fine, really, but they have to stay on the ship with Raven and Jordan. So, _now_ is the time to say it if you can't make that choice."

Everyone turned to Murphy. "Really, guys?" He looked offended. "I'm going. I have nothing to lose."

Bellamy rolled his eyes, exasperated. "Except maybe your own life, Murphy, which you seem to always put before anything else." 

Murphy raised his eyebrow, then he briefly looked at Emori. "I'm going."

Bellamy nodded, and no one else talked. "So, we will bring guns with us, but using them should be a last resort."

Raven snorted at that. "In this case, you shouldn't bring Clarke with you."

Clarke felt as if someone just punched her. 

"Just leave the girl alone, Raven", Murphy said drily. 

Bellamy's eyes landed on Murphy, then on Clarke, then back on Murphy. His jaw was so tightly clenched that Clarke could see the muscles of his neck working. 

Raven laughed bitterly. "It looks like Bellamy isn't the only one defending a traitor anymore. What's _your_ deal, Murphy?"

"My deal is none of your business."

Raven looked at Emori, then at Clarke, then at Murphy. "Wait, did something-"

"For fucks sake, Raven! She sacrificed herself so you could fucking live!" Murphy almost screamed at her.

Raven took a step back, her eyes wide, and she stormed out. 

"I'll talk to her," Shaw said, following her out of the room.

There was an awkward moment of silence after that. Everyone was avoiding to look at Clarke, but Bellamy wasn't. His eyes seemed haunted again, as if he was looking at her but not _really_ at her. 

"So, are we done with the meeting?" Jackson asked, breaking the silence. 

"I suppose we are," Bellamy answered. "There's nothing new about Eligius status. We'll review the inventory tomorrow morning." 

"In this case," Miller said, "I propose we all have a drink in the lounge."

"I'm not sure it's a good idea to get drunk the night before we-" Bellamy began to say, but Miller cut him.

"That's exactly why we are having a drink. It could be our last one, and I want to have it with my friends whom I didn't get to see for six years."

So they all went to the lounge. Murphy put on some music, and Miller prepared some shots. They all took one in their hand with the exception of Clarke and Echo. After what happened the last time she drank, she'd rather stay sober this time.

"Come on, Echo!" Emori said teasingly. "Have a shot with us." 

"I never drink."

"You did once on the ring though." Emori winked at Echo, and Echo blush only a little, glancing at Bellamy. "If it wasn't for those couple of drinks you had, you may had never slept with Bellamy. So, good things can come from alcohol. Have a shot with your friends!"

Clarke felt as if she was about to faint. She felt Bellamy's stare on her, but she didn't look at him. Her eyes met Murphy's only for a moment, but it was enough for him to hold her out not one but two shots. She drank the first one, taking advantage of everyone's attention on Echo, but she waited the others for the second one. 

"Fine," Echo finally said. "I'll do it, but just this one shot."

They all drank their shot together, Clarke drinking her second one. 

"How about we play a game of pool with Miller and Jackson?" Murphy asked her. "You and I against them?"

"Yeah, sounds fun". Clarke smiled. "Let's do it."

She walked to prepare the pool table, even if she had no idea how to place the balls, and Murphy went to get Miller and Jackson. The four of them played for a while, talking and laughing. Clarke was feeling tipsy, and she wondered if she should or not take another shot. She decided not to, because she needed to have her head clear if she wanted to talk to Bellamy. 

"Clarke," Jackson told her while Murphy was talking to Miller, "I'm sorry for Abby. Jordan told me about what happened, and I hope she's not angry at me. It would have made more sense if they woke her up instead of me..."

"No, it wouldn't have," she replied softly. "You're as good as a doctor than she is. Monty and Harper took the right decision." Jackson smiled, looking touched by her words. "I just wish I had the chance to see them become parents." 

"Yeah, that was-" he paused, "that was hard to do because I knew it would be the last time I'd get to see them, but it was beautiful. They loved each other so much, and they loved Jordan even more."

Clarke felt tears in her eyes, and she tried to blink them away. "I'm sure they did." 

"Clarke, I-" he looked at her hesitantly, "I know you don't have it easy right now with Madi and Abby in cryo, so... I'd like for you to know that I'm not angry at you, and neither is Nathan. We both talked about it a lot and, even if we don't agree with what you did, we understand why you did it. You did what you thought you had to do, and we did the same in the bunker." 

"Thank you." She smiled a little, and then she saw Echo and Emori walking to them. They wanted to play too, so Clarke and Jackson both gave them their stick so they could play with Murphy and Miller. Jackson stayed with them, but Clarke didn't. She thought it could be the right moment to talk to Bellamy. 

He was sitting alone on one of the couches, a drink of hard liquor nearly finished in his hand. She joined him, sitting next to him.

She was too close to him for her own good, but she couldn't get herself to move away from him. His eyes were a little drunk, and they slowly went up along her body until they landed on hers. She suddenly felt as if she'd just been electrified, goosebumps scattering all over her body, her heart pounding in her ears. 

"Clarke," he said, and she felt herself shiver at how deep his voice was. "Having fun?"

"Yeah, I was, but I wanted to talk to you." 

He finished his drink in one gulp, waiting for her to say more. She closed her eyes for a moment, wondering if she had the strenght to do it. She didn't want him to think that she was desperate - _she was_ -, that she waited six years only for him to come back - _she did_ \- so she could tell him how in love with him she was - _she still was_.

She just needed to let go of him, to move on, because she couldn't continue to feel this way around him. It was hurting her, and she was tired of feeling hurt.

"I-I wanted to explain myself, because I feel as if I was being awkward around you lately, and-", she paused, taking all the courage she had, "I think it's because I was in love with you before Praimfaya." 

His eyes widened, filled with something she couldn't decipher, and he swallowed.

"I was in love with who you were, but you're not this person anymore, and- and I just had a hard time getting to know who you are now." She paused for a moment. "I kept thinking of who we were, but I need to accept that we both changed. This moon could be the opportunity to start something new for myself, but I don't want to feel like a stranger to you, because you're too important to me. So, I want for us to be friends." She caught her breath. 

He stared at her for a long moment, so long that Clarke thought she might have said something wrong. Then, he briefly glanced towards the pool table.

"Is this what you really want?" he finally asked her. "For us to be friends?" 

_It's not._

"It is."


	10. Beautiful in the swirling green lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm really excited to post this chapter because this is the moment the story takes off, and I hope you'll enjoy the world I'm building here.

"It is," she said. "Isn't it what you want too?"

Her eyes fell to the ground, and she waited apprehensively for him to reply. _When are you going to understand that she's not the Clarke you left behind anymore, Bellamy? She's a burden._ Raven's words came up into her head, and it made her feel insecure. 

Talking to him, exposing herself this way, wasn't her best idea. Why would he want her as a friend if she was a burden to him, to everyone? _I think I was in love with you before Praimfaya._ She shouldn't have been this honest with him. She shouldn't have. _Shit_. Why did she tell him _that_? 

"You called me everyday for six years." 

His voice sounded hoarse as if he had just shouted for hours, and her heart skipped a beat as she quickly looked at him with her eyes wide and slighty frightened. _How could he know? Murphy wouldn't tell him about it._

"Who told you?" she asked, her voice trembling.

"Madi."

She nodded, blinking at him, feeling naked and embarassed. He didn't say anything else, he just stood up and left so she followed him out of the room with a sensation of déjà vu. She caught up with him in the narrow corridor, grabbing his forearm as he did to her hours ago. 

"You didn't answer," she said. 

He sighed, and she could feel all the tension in him. When he turned to her and stared at her mouth, she realised she had been biting her bottom lip. It was hurting a little but, before she could touch it with her fingers to make sure it wasn't bleeding, Bellamy closed the distance between them. 

The corridor was so narrow that, when he took a step toward her and she took a step back because she couldn't trust herself to be _this_ close to him, she felt her back touch the wall as he took another step forward. 

He was now really close to her, his body almost leaning against hers, his chest brushing against her breasts. His breath was hot against her skin, and he was still drunkenly staring at her mouth. He softly took her cheek in his palm, then he lightly moved his thumb to her bottom lip, leaving a trail of fire on her skin as he did so. When he touched her lip, before withdrawing his thumb, she thought she might have forgotten how to breathe. 

His eyes went up her face, clinging to hers, as if he couldn't believe she was real. 

"I missed you, Clarke," he whispered, his voice raspy and broken, " _every day_ , for six years." She could see tears trapped in his eyes, refusing to escape. "I had to learn how to live without you, but-", he paused for a long moment, his eyes still glued to hers. "I don't- I can't lose you again. If you want me to be your _friend_ , then I will be." 

He suddenly removed his hand and took two steps away from her, leaving her breathless. She touched her bottom lip with her shaking fingers, thinking of the sensation of his thumb on it. What was _that_? 

She looked at him, trying to understand... He seemed pained, running his fingers through his hair while glancing between her and the door leading to the lounge. She could hear their friends talking, and laughing, and she didn't know why but she felt hurt. 

"You should go back to Echo," she said weakly but, before he could react, she saw Raven and Shaw walking toward them out of the corner of her eye. 

She tried to calm herself down, but it felt to her as if the tension between her and Bellamy was tangible. When Raven and Shaw walked past them, Raven raised an eyebrow but she mostly ignored them before joining the others. 

She didn't wait for Bellamy to say or do something else, she just left without even glancing at him. She walked into her room, closing the door behind her, and she sat on her bed with her arms around her knees, shaking like a leaf. She just stared at nothing for a while, reliving what just happened, then she heard a knock on the door. 

"Clarke?" It was Murphy, but she didn't have the strenght to answer him. He opened the door anyway. "What happened?" 

She felt the bed moving under her as he sat close to her. She didn't talk for a long moment, and neither did he. He just put his arm - awkwardly - around her shoulder, trying to make her feel a little safer. 

"I saw you leaving with Bellamy," he said, breaking the silence, "but you two never came back so I went to see if everything was alright. He was in the corridor, and I asked him where you were, but he wouldn't tell me. He just kept staring at nothing, then he apologized to me for not being a good friend since he saw the both of us together. He left before I could say anything." 

He sighed, and Clarke knew he was going to say something he thought was important. 

"When we were eating in your room before the meeting and you asked me if I thought Bellamy was avoiding me because of what we did, I remembered something. It was only a feeling and I wasn't sure of it, so I didn't want to tell you right away. But now, after seeing Bellamy in the corridor looking so...uspset- Clarke, I think he's-"

"I know what you're going to say," she cut him, "but he's not in love with _me_. He's in love with a ghost. We both are." Tears filled her eyes as she finally put into words why she was so hurt.

 _It's been five years, so I suppose you moved on. Why wouldn't you? There's no point in loving a ghost._ There was no point in loving a ghost but he did it anyway, and so did she. 

"But, Clarke-"

"I don't-" she closed her eyes for an instant, "I don't want to feel like a ghost, Murphy." He was looking at her, confused. "I should be loved for who I am _now_ , not who I was, and so should he." Tears quietly fell down her face. "We both need to move on."

There was a long moment of silence as she gently wiped her tears. 

"I don't want to be alone tonight," she whispered. "Could you stay with me please?" 

She felt his worried stare on her, but she couldn't look at him right now. She just wanted to close her eyes and sleep.

Murphy nodded, and she heard him swallow. "Yeah, I don't feel like being alone either."

They both got under the sheets. She laid on her side, Murphy behind her with his arm around her, his nose slighty touching the back of her neck. He fell asleep first and, when she did too, she didn't sleep well. 

 

_"What if something happened to them?" Madi asked, worried._

_Clarke glanced at the dark blue sky before getting her attention back to the campfire, trying to focus on the heat emanating from it._

_"Nothing happened," she answered._

_"But it's been almost six years, Clarke! What if they never made it to space?"_

_"They did."_

_"How would you know?"_

_She didn't reply, knowing she'd been living in denial for the past year. She couldn't bare the thought of them, him, dying._

_"What if you never get to tell him?" She felt her heart tighten. "What if he never gets to know you loved him before he went to space?"_

_"He will get back, and I will tell him. I'm sure of it."_

_Madi kept silent for a moment, and Clarke thought she was done with her questions._

_"How do you think he will react when you do tell him?"_

_She rolled her eyes, a little exasperated by Madi's questions, but she smiled anyway._

_She had thought of a million different ways to tell him about her feelings, but she never really thought about his reaction when she would do so. How do you react when you learn that someone loved you for the past six years and waited for you to come back to them? When they loved you so much they called you every day?_

_"Do you think he'll kiss you? Because that would be gross."_

_She laughed, but she let herself imagine his lips on hers and, yeah, it definitively wasn't gross._

 

When she woke up, it took her a moment to remember she fell asleep with Murphy behind her. She turned to him, but he wasn't there.

_I think I was in love with you before Praimfaya. I was in love with who you were, but you're not this person anymore. I missed you, Clarke, every day, for six years. He's in love with a ghost. We both are._

She closed her eyes, trying to get these words out of her head. They both loved the person they left behind, but six years passed and they missed their chance. 

And even if she didn't particularly like Echo, she didn't want for her to get hurt because she couldn't let go of the Bellamy before Praimfaya. The Bellamy of today deserved to be loved for the person he had become, for who he is now, and wasn't that what Echo was doing? She was there for him the past six years, she helped him, and she changed with him. 

That wasn't fair of her to hope Bellamy would leave a relationship of more than three years for a girl he used to love. Maybe, one day, when the both of them wouldn't be haunted by their past anymore, they could be friends. 

As for now, she had to get prepared for the landing. So she got up, went to the bathroom to take a shower, then walked back to the bedroom. She stared at the blue walls one last time, recalling all the times she had looked at the sky from the Earth, waiting for her friends, for him, to come back, then she started to get her backpack ready. She put some Eligius clothes in it, dressing herself with her own clothes. She was about to leave the room when she remembered the sketchbook Bellamy gave her. She took it on the desk, noticing there was also a box of colored pencils next to it. She put these two in her backpack before leaving the room. 

Everyone was scattered around the dining room, talking and eating, and Clarke could feel the excitement emanating from them. They were about to land on a moon and to explore a world they knew nothing about. It was a little scary, sure, but it was exciting.

Only Raven looked withdrawn, leaning against a wall by herself with her arms crossed. Clarke sighed, thinking how now could be the last chance she would get to make amends with her. She walked to her apprehensively. 

"Hey," she said with a tentative smile, but Raven barely glanced at her. 

"Hey," she replied.

"I was thinking the two of us could talk considering, you know, we may never get the chance again."

"Yeah, sure." 

Raven was still looking at anything but her, and there was a moment of silence. Clarke gathered her courage, thinking she had nothing to lose with being completely honest. 

"I know you're tired of hearing this, Raven, but I really am sorry for _everything_." Raven kept silent, her arms still crossed and her eyes still avoiding hers. "I-I never asked to be the one to make the hard choices. Whatever I'd choose, there was always going to be people getting hurt, but I had to make all those choices to protect my people, to protect my friends, to protect _you_. I never forgot about the people I hurt, the ones I killed. How could I? I have to live with their death every day. But I- I always only did what I thought was necessary. I always did the best I could, and I know it wasn't always enough. I just don't think it's fair for you to judge me." 

She swallowed, knowing she had to say more. 

"When I realised I couldn't make it in time to Becca's lab, I didn't hesitate to sacrifice my life so you could live. I was alone, and afraid, and I wasn't ready to die, but- but when I saw the rocket taking off, all I felt was relief... I was relieved because you would all get to live even if I wouldn't."

She suddenly remembered Echo's words to her. _The great Wanheda, what a joke! They talked about you for six years like you were some kind of god, and for what?_

"And I'm sorry if I didn't live up to your expectations when you came back from space, but you don't know what I went through. Surviving Praimfaya, walking on the scorched earth for weeks, alone, and hungry, and thirsty, and tired, and I- I almost killed myself, Raven!" She felt tears in her eyes, and Raven finally looked at her with her lips clenched together in a tight white line. "This was how desperate I was. I-I put the gun on my temple, and I was ready to pull the trigger. I wanted for it to end. I couldn't do it anymore. If it wasn't for this bird, I-" but she couldn't finish her sentence. 

Tears ran down her face, and she wiped them absently. She wasn't looking at Raven anymore, because she just couldn't. This moment in the desert, it was the only moment she had wanted to die and it was hard to talk about it. 

"I found the valley, and I found Madi, and she was all I had for six years. She was the only person I interacted with for six years! I just couldn't risk to lose her, Raven. I never intended for you, or Shaw, or anyone, to get hurt, but I had to make a choice. Maybe I didn't make the right one, but I had to chose _her_ , and I- I get why you're angry at me. I betrayed you, but you can't put the blame on me for Monty and Harper's decision. It was their decision! They wanted to live their lives only the two of them. I miss them too, you know. Maybe not as much as you do, because I didn't get to spend six years in space with them. But their death is not my fault. It's no one's fault."

Raven looked at her for a moment with an expression on her face that Clarke couldn't decipher, and she just left without saying anything. 

She sighed, a little defeated, and she took the time to compose herself before getting a bowl of algea and joining the others. Murphy wasn't there anymore, so she talked with Jordan, Jackson and Miller. She smiled and she laughed and, when the time came for the landing, she hugged Jordan. 

"May we meet again," she told him. 

He smiled with tears in his eyes. "May we meet again."

"If anything happens to me, could you take care of..." but the words choked in her throat as she couldn't bare the thought of never seeing Madi again. 

Jordan nodded, knowing what she was asking of him. "I will. She will never be alone, I swear."

She hugged him again, feeling as if nothing would ever be the same once she would get on the ground. For a moment, she felt so scared of losing everything that she thought of staying on the ship. It would be so easy, so peaceful, to live a life like Monty and Harper did, but that's not what she wanted for Madi. She needed to get down there, and she needed to find a way for her to have a safe and happy life. 

She went to the armory, and she put a handgun with a lot of ammunitions in her backpack. She even took some explosives and knives, but she kept two of the later directly on her - one strapped to her belt and the other strapped near her ankle. Finally, she took one of the sleeping bags someone left in one of the corner of the room. 

She walked into the transport ship, joining the others only a moment before Bellamy arrived.

"No one changed their mind?" he asked. They all shook their head quietly, walking to their seat.

She put her backpack on the ground, and she got into the seat next to Murphy, strapping herself. 

"Ready to meet some aliens?" he teased her. 

She rolled her eyes and smiled. "Shut up." 

"Raven, Jordan, we are ready to go", Shaw said on the radio.

There was a moment of silence before Raven replied. "I see you soon, guys."

The transport ship took off, shaking a lot. Clarke clenched her hands on her seatbelt, recalling the first time she was sent to the ground with Wells next to her. She glanced at Murphy, and he winked at her. 

She closed her eyes, waiting for the ship to stop shaking. It took a while before it did but once it did and she opened her eyes, she was blinded by all the yellow light coming from the window in front of Shaw. She could see the two suns, and the blue sky, and it was breathtaking. 

When they landed, she got up and grabbed her backpack. They all walked to the door leading to the outside, waiting for Bellamy to open it. He sighed and pulled the lever up. The door opened.

The first thing Clarke experienced was the wind gently swirling on her face. It felt good and it smelled like wild flowers, remembering her Shadow Valley. Then, she had to blink a few times before she could see clearly, because the light of the sun - the two suns - was way more brighter than it ever was on Earth. Finally, she saw the trees only a few feet away from the transport ship, and they were weirdly beautiful. All of the trunks were twisted, as if the trees had grown around an invisible pole, and they were a little glittering in the light. The leaves looked soft, almost etheral, and they weren't only green, or yellow, or orange, or red, or pink, they were also all of the other colors. She even wondered if there weren't colors she had never seen before. 

She walked out of the transport ship, speechless, followed by the others. She could see mountains far away, and she noticed how the two suns seemed to make all of the colors around them more vivid and stunning.

Shaw broke the silence first. "I have to get back to space but, before I do, we need to make sure the radios work on the moon." 

Emori nodded, and she grabbed the radio strapped to her belt, waiting for Shaw to disappear into the ship. "This is a test," she said, and they heard it on the other radios - only Bellamy and Miller had one too. 

"Yeah," he said, coming back. "I heard it on the transport ship's radio. You're good to go." He put his hand on the lever next to the door. "I'll be waiting for you guys to make contact." He pulled the lever down, and the doors closed. 

They walked away from the transport ship, and they silently watched it taking off to space. 

"We should get going," Echo said when they couldn't see it in the sky anymore.

Emori looked at the device strapped to her wrist. "It says the signal from the solar beacon isn't too far away from here in _this_ ," she pointed towards the mountains, "direction." 

They followed her, walking for less than thirty minutes among the more and more dispersed trees before they could see the solar beacon, in the distance, standing in the middle of a _huge_ prairie. They had to walk another twenty minutes only to get to it. Emori connected her device to the solar beacon, waiting for the data to load. 

Meanwhile, Clarke watched around her. Everything looked similar in a way - the grass, the trees, the mountains -, but it all felt so different. The shapes and the textures weren't really the same, the colors were more vibrant, the heat of the suns was touching her skin more strongly, and the nature around them was smelling strongly of something intriguing. The first time she smelled it, she thought of wild flowers but now she wasn't so sure. It was more elegant, and she never smelled something like this before. 

"That's not possible," Emori said. "According to the data, this _is_ an Eligius solar beacon, but it's been on the moon for almost twelve hundred years. I don't get it. I thought the data was corrupted or something when I first gathered it from the ship, but- It's not. Everything's clear, it's like this solar beacon really has been on the moon for this long."

"Well," Murphy said, "it doesn't make any sense, so I suppose we'll just have to get over it." He took a piece of green fabric out of his pocket, and he tied it to the beacon. They all looked at him, confused. "People used to plant a flag when a land discovery was made", he explained. "I know Eligius discovered the moon first, but I thought it could be something to remember Monty." Clarke looked at the green fabric, smiling. _Monty Green_. "I know, I'm awesome." He smirked, and they all rolled their eyes but she knew everyone was touched by Murphy's intention.

"Monty would have loved this moon," Bellamy said, sounding melancholic. 

They all nodded, and they started to talk about him and Harper for a while, smiling at some memories. 

"The asshole almost killed me with his algea," Murphy said, and Bellamy laughed. 

Clarke looked at him laughing, and she couldn't help but find him even more attractive. The light in his eyes, the little wrinkles around them, he was beautiful. 

"I don't want to be _this_ person," Emori said, "but we really need to keep going."

Considering they didn't learn any new information on Eligius from the solar beacon's data, they decided to walk toward the mountains. They walked, and walked, and then the prairie became a forest of twisted trees, and they continued to walk. 

"Guys!" Jackson suddenly exclaimed. "There's a stream right there! We should follow it. We have enough dried algea for a little more than two weeks, but we only have enough water for a few days."

So they walked along the stream for a couple more hours until the sky started to get dark. Echo made a fire, and they all scattered their sleeping bags around it, sitting on them to eat and drink a little. They decided that Bellamy and Murphy would be on guard duty for the first half of the night and that Miller and Echo would relieve them for the second half. 

Now that the suns were set, they could clearly see the planet which the moon was orbiting. It was big and green as an emerald in the dark sky, and it was casting a mellow greenish light on everything around them. It was magnificent, and it was unlike anything they had seen before.

Clarke was the first one to get in her sleeping bag. She glanced at Bellamy getting his gun ready, and she realised he hadn't speak to her all day. She wasn't sure he even looked at her. She felt her heart sink a little, but she tried to think of something else. She was so tired that it didn't take her long to fall asleep. 

 

_"Do you think there's something else out there?" Madi asked with curiosity._

_Clarke and her had decided to sleep under the stars that night, and they were both laying on their back looking at the moon in the dark sky._

_"What do you mean?" she asked._

_"It's just- If there are other planets, and other galaxies, we can't be the only ones, right?"_

_Clarke thought about it for a moment. "What do you think they would be? Humans like us?"_

_"I hope not. Humans suck a little. It'd be cool if there was a planet full alien-looking dogs."_

_Clarke laughed genuinely. "Dogs, really?"_

_"I just wished they were still here," Madi said with tears in her eyes. "Not just the dogs, the other animals that went extinct too."_

_"Yeah, maybe it's better we never know if there's something out there, because it means we don't get to destroy another planet."_

 

.....

 

It's been a week since they landed on the moon, and they were beginning to feel a little worried. They didn't have any clues of where Eligius could be, and they weren't seeing the end of the forest. They had followed the stream, and they could see the mountains in the distance but they didn't seem to get any closer to them. 

They still had enough dried algea for a little more than a week so they kept going, hoping to find something before they didn't have any left to eat. There were plants and weird looking mushrooms in the forest, but they had no way to know weither they were edible or poisonous.

The days were mainly the same. The two suns always rised and set at the same time, and the sky was always clear. They walked and they talked and, after a couple days, they didn't have much left to say so they just walked. Even the nights were the same, as they made a fire and looked at the green planet in the sky before going to sleep. There were always two of them on guard duty the first half of the night and two others taking over for the second half, so they would all get one night off once in a while. Needless to say, after a week of constantly walking and only sleeping a little, they were exhausted and their feet were hurting. 

Clarke didn't get to talk with Bellamy once, because he completely ignored her. She could only assumed it had something to do with their discussion the night before the landing. _I can't lose you again_ , he had told her. _If you want me to be your friend, then I will be._ She was feeling a little heartbroken, because she really wanted for them to work on their friendship, but maybe he needed some time. Maybe he needed to let go of her ghost before he could get to know her, to be friend with her. 

In the days following the first week, Clarke began to wonder if they weren't running in circles. When she shared her thoughts, only Echo said she was wondering the same. Emori told them it wasn't possible because, even if they were following the stream, they were still walking toward the mountains. But Clarke's sensation of déjà vu only got worse as the days went by, and she soon began to feel a little creeped out by the forest. One night she was on guard duty with Echo, she thought she heard someone whispering not too fay away from them. She told Echo about it, and they both woke up everyone to search the surrounding area. They didn't found anything, or anyone, and they went back to sleep. Clarke thought the morning would never come, feeling a little paranoid. Of course, Echo coldly glancing at her as if she was weak didn't help. 

One the fourteenth day, they started to talk about reaching to Shaw. They thought they could go back to the ship, rest for a while, then get back on the moon but elsewhere. They agreed to wait until they didn't have any dried algea left, so they continued to walk. 

After a few hours, Emori looked at the device on her wrist and her eyes widened. "Guys!" she exclaimed. "There's a signal near us! It's from another solar beacon! We were on the right direction after all!" They all looked relieved, and Jackson and Miller even hugged and kissed each other. 

They started running in the direction of the signal and, after ten minutes or so, the forest became a prairie. The solar beacon was standing in the middle of it and, when they finally reached it, they all looked confused. 

There was a piece of green fabric tied around it. 

"How is that possible?" Emori asked. Her eyes were a little frightened, and she was desperately looking at the device on her wrist. "Maybe we did run in circles." 

Clarke felt a dreadful sensation racing up her spine as she realised something. "We didn't," she said, feeling everyone's stare on her. "Each day was a loop." 

They all looked at her as if she was being crazy. She shivered, glancing at the others with only fear in her eyes. 

"We didn't run in circles, we just didn't get any further than what we walked the first day. Think about it, each day was the _same_. We never found the source of the stream, and we didn't get any closer to the mountains after fourteen days of walking. Each day was a loop of the first day, of when we walked into the forest." 

There was a brief moment of silence as they all realised with horror she was right. 

"I don't know how we got back here, or why," she continued, her voice shaking, "but there's something wrong with this moon. We should get the hell out of here."

Bellamy shook his head. "To go where, we-" 

"Monty found _this_ moon," Murphy cut him, agitated, "but this doesn't mean there aren't others which are habitable. Clarke's right! This moon is creepy as fuck, and we barely have any food left."

"Yeah," Emori said, "I agree. We need to get the fuck out of here. I'm calling Shaw." She took the radio strapped to her belt, her hands trembling. "Shaw? Do you hear me?" No answer. "Fucking hell, Shaw, answer me." Still no answer. "Shit. If you hear this, if anyone hear this, you have to come get us, now!"

They were all looking at the radio, waiting for someone to answer. 

"Emori?" It was Shaw, and they all sighed of relief. "What's going on, guys? You've only been on the moon for three days."

Emori looked at the radio as if it was a bomb ready to detonate. "What are you talking about? We've been on the moon for two weeks."

Murphy took the radio from Emori's hand. "We don't have time for this shit. Come get us, now."

"I'm on my way," Shaw said, and Emori strapped the radio back to her belt. 

"Should we make a fire while waiting for him?" Jackson asked. "It could take a while, and the suns are already setting. It's going to be cold soon."

"I'm on it," Echo said, and she went to find a good spot. Clarke noticed Bellamy briefly looked at her before following his girlfriend.

No one talked for a while, then they finally heard Echo calling them. "Come on, you guys, I got the fire started." 

They all put their backpack on the ground and sat around the fire, quietly looking at the flames dancing. Clarke tried to warm herself up, but the heat of the fire wouldn't make the shivers of cold running down her spine go away. She felt as if something terrible was going to happen, and the only thought of not getting back to Madi was making her so sick to her stomach that she thought she might throw up. She tried to ignore the sensation for a while, but it was only getting worse. 

"I'm sorry, guys," she said, breaking the silence, "I think I'm gonna be sick." 

She got up, and she ran further away. She stopped after a couple of minutes, thinking she was far enough so they wouldn't hear her throw up. She could see them in the distance, around the fire, but she wasn't sure they could see her as the only source of light in the dark sky was now the mellow emerald one coming from the planet. She fell on her knees, her palms shaking on the ground, waiting. But she didn't throw up, she only cried. She felt as if she was being weak, but she couldn't help it. These past two weeks, it was too much. She was exhausted, and afraid.

As she tried to calm herself down a little, she realised Bellamy had left the others. He was walking toward her so she tried to get herself up, but she was trembling so much that she couldn't do it. She could only stare at the ground, hoping that he wasn't looking for her. 

"Clarke?" he screamed, still far away from her. "I can't see you in the dark, are you alright?" 

_Shit._ He acted as if she didn't exist for the past two weeks, but he chose _this_ specific moment to be worried about her? Really? She was about to tell him to go away when she heard the transport ship arriving and, then, everything went to chaos.

As soon as the transport ship appeared in the dark sky, she saw flamboyant strings of emerald green light coming at them from everywhere. They were swirling silently around them, dancing like burning flames, mesmerizing. It was beautiful, and scary, and...

"Clarke!" Bellamy shouted.

She looked at him in the distance, and he was now quiclky walking toward her. The strings of light were moving around him, but he didn't even seem to mind them. He had only eyes for her.

She glanced at the others. They were standing around the fire, their back turned to it, and she noticed they were all pointing their guns in front of them. She narrowed her eyes a little, and she realised with horror they weren't alone. There were hooded people circling them, completely dressed in dark clothes.

Before she could warn Bellamy, she was pushed to the ground. 

"Clarke!" 

Someone was trying to get on top of her, but she kicked them in the face. She heard shots getting fired near the others, and she quickly glanced at Bellamy. He was fighting one of those people, trying to reach for his gun. 

Then, she looked at the transport ship, which was landing not that far away from her, and it suddenly clicked in her head. Whoever these people were, they were waiting for the transport ship to arrive. If they only wanted to attack them, to kill them, they would have done it during the past two weeks, but they didn't. They were waiting for them to call the transport ship back. It was a trap, and they fell directly into it.

"Bellamy!" she screamed. "It's a trap!"

He glanced at her, frightened, then he looked at the transport ship. He nodded to her, and he finally reached for the gun strapped on his belt. He fired a lot of shots on the person fighting him, who fell on the ground, probably dead. He started to run to her.

She was pushed to the ground again, on her back, and she felt hands on her neck choking her. She heard Bellamy shooting a few times, but he missed. He was way too far away, and she was now having a hard time breathing.

"Clarke!" 

She reached for the knife strapped to her belt, and she stabbed her attacker in the ribs. They let go of her for a moment only to slap her hard in the face. Her head violently knocked against the ground, her hand letting go of the knife, and she thought for a moment she was going to pass out. The person took the knife, but she kicked them where she had stabbed them. 

While she was laying on the ground, feeling weak, she saw something move out of the corner of her eye. She realised there was someone else near her, holding what seemed like an explosive and looking as if they were waiting for the transport ship to land so it would be easier to reach. She turned on her side and tried to get up to stop them from throwing the explosive, but she couldn't as she was feeling way too dizzy.

She glanced at Bellamy. He was still running to her.

"They are going to blow up the transport ship!" she screamed at him. 

She saw him stop running, glancing at the person with the explosive then at her. He raised his gun, pointing behind her, and shot a few times. She turned, and she barely had the time to see anything before she was shoved on her back again. Her attacker was now on top of her, trying to stab her in the neck. 

They were both holding the knife but, whoever that person was, they were clearly stronger than her. When she quickly looked at Bellamy, she saw him aiming his gun again at the person attacking her. When he pulled the trigger though, nothing happened. The magazine was empty. 

In this moment, she could only hope that Shaw was getting the transport ship back to safety in space. But when she looked, she realised with horror he wasn't. He was still landing, and she wanted to curse at him. While struggling to keep the knife away from her neck, she gathered all the strenght she had left to scream at Bellamy.

"The explosive!" She wanted him to realised that he didn't have any time left to save her, he needed to protect the transport ship from blowing up. 

She caught a glimpse of him standing still, beautiful in the swirling green lights. He was staring helplessly at her on the ground, as she was fighting for her life, but then he looked at the person holding the explosive and he started to run again.

She felt pain as the tip of the knife went through her skin, and blood spilled down her neck. She wasn't strong enough. She knew she was going to die, but she refused to until she was sure the transport ship was safe.

She glanced at the person holding the explosive and she realised they were about to throw it. It felt like the time slowed down as she waited for Bellamy to stop them, but he didn't.

He violently charged at her attacker instead, pinning them on the ground next to her. As she was still laying on her back, she touched the blood on her neck with shaking hands, noticing the knife only a few feets away from them.

The moment Bellamy grabbed the knife on the ground and stabbed her attacker in the neck, bleeding them to death, was also the moment the explosive touched the transport ship not that far away from them.

The explosion was so powerful that it completely destroyed the transport ship, probably killing Shaw instantly, and the red flames bursting through it contrasted with the green lights swirling everywhere. Bellamy pushed himself on top of her, covering her with his own body as the shock wave of the explosion hit them.

Then, after a moment, he slightly pulled himself away from her only so they could look at each other. His face was so close, she could see the blood splattered on his freckles and on the strands of hair falling down his face. She could see the green lights reflecting in his eyes, which were desperately staring into hers, and his lips trembling, and she started to cry softly.

"Why did you save _me_?" she whispered to him, angry and defeated. "You were supposed to protect the transport ship, this was our priority! Now we lost it, and Shaw is dead."


	11. Not again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished mapping out the entire story this morning and, so far, it's about forty chapters. I can't say exactly how many because I realised I'm having a hard time dealing with the chapters length (sorry for the inconsistency!), and I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being a lot more than forty. Also, I edited some of the tags for the story, but there are some I don't want to put for now because I don't want to spoil what's coming. I will add them as the story progresses. 
> 
> So, that's about it. I hope you'll love this chapter!

The strings of green light were silently swirling in the dark sky, magnificent and terrifying, enveloping them as they were lying on the ground. 

Clarke could smell the transport ship burning not far away from them, and it was making her sick to her stomach. "You should have let me die", she told him in a resentful way.

They not only lost the only way they had to get back to the mining ship, they also lost the only way they had for their people to land on any other moon or planet. Unless they could miraculously find another dropship somewhere, they were stuck on this moon and their people were stuck on the mining ship. 

She shivered as desperation spread through her whole being at the thought of Madi being stuck in space forever. 

Bellamy was still leaning on top of her, and she felt his fingers wiping off the tears falling down near one of her temple. His eyes, filled with such distress, looked away from hers only to glance at the bleeding cut on her neck, and he swallowed hard. The emotion in his eyes brought her back to Becca's lab an hour before Praimfaya. _Nothing is happening to you._

"I couldn't," he said almost inaudibly, "not again."

She opened her mouth to say something, but her mind went suddenly blank. He was sliding his - trembling - fingers along the skin of her neck, stopping near the cut, and he was staring into her eyes with such intensity that she wondered for a moment if he wasn't going to kiss her. He moved his face a little closer to hers, and she could feel the tension between their mouth. It didn't feel as if they were lying on the ground, covered in blood, afraid and exhausted, not far away from the transport ship burning. It felt as if they were back on Earth outside Becca's lab, fearing for each other's life a moment before they went separate ways.

When she wanted to tell him she loved him, but the thought of losing him was so unbearable that she told him to hurry instead. 

_I couldn't, not again._ He left her to die once but he couldn't do it again and, in this moment, she realised how much he was struggling between his head and his heart. 

Was she doing the right thing by trying to move on from the Bellamy she was in love with? The one driven by his heart? She thought she was in love with a ghost, with a part of him that didn't exist anymore, but this part of him wasn't totally gone, was it? She had caught glimpses of his heart the days before the landing. It was subtle, and fleeting, and only in the way his eyes would spark a little, or in the way he would touch her as if he _needed_ it. 

It wasn't the Bellamy driven by his head who chose to save her instead of the transport ship, it was the one driven by his heart. _I think he never forgave himself for leaving you behind. He stayed in his room for weeks, and then... then he just changed._ She thought he was now a complete different person who happened to be haunted by the guilt of leaving her behind, but what if he became a completely different person only _because_ he couldn't bear the guilt of leaving her to die?

"I'm sorry," he whispered, and she felt his breath on her lips. He sounded tormented, and broken, and she understood he wasn't only sorry for letting the transport ship explode. He was sorry for leaving her behind to die in Praimfaya.

His face was so close to hers that she could feel his hair tickling her forehead, his nose barely touching hers. She could feel the warmth of his body on top of hers, and it made her feel safe despite everything that just happened. She had no idea what was going on around them, but she was having a hard time thinking about something else than him. For all she knew, they could be surrounded by hundreds of these hooded people right now, and she wouldn't even care. 

The way they were staring at each other's mouth, it felt so intimate. They had never been this close before, and she wouldn't be surprised if he could hear how loudly her heart was beating. She spent six years wondering how it would feel to kiss him, how it would feel when their lips would touch, when their tongues would meet, and she just couldn't imagine it feeling any other way than intoxicating and-

They heard footsteps running toward them, and the moment shattered. Bellamy recoiled from her, his eyes suddenly filled with guilt. 

"Get on your knees!" Miller shouted a few feets away from them. "Get on your knees or I'll shoot you!" There was a brief moment of silence. "Now put both of your hands behind your head and don't move!"

"Keep your gun on this one!" Echo ordered him, her voice sounding further away than Miller's. "We can't let them escape! We need to interrogate them."

Bellamy lifted himself up, and she turned to her side to get up. He held out his hand to help her but, before she could take it, Echo ran into him. She hugged him and she kissed him, seeming relieved.

"I was afraid something happened to you," she said, pressing her forehead to his. He didn't answer, and Clarke looked away from them. 

For a moment, she was back in the desert that morning after the sandstorm when she was staring at Bellamy and Echo reuniting. She remembered seeing them kissing with such an ease that she could only assume they had been together for a long time, and she remembered how heartbroken she felt when she understood he had moved on from her. All those days spent talking to him on the radio, all those dreamed moments of the both of them confessing their feelings, all of that had shattered and faded away. 

She tried to get up, but the back of her head was hurting, her hands were shaking, and the green lights dancing around them were making her dizziness worse. 

"Clarke!" She felt Murphy's hands on her, helping her stand up. "Your neck is bleeding, what happened?" he asked worringly. He tore a piece of cloth from his shirt and used it to softly wipe the dark blood on her neck. 

She looked at him with tears in her eyes, feeling so defeated. _We lost the transport ship_ , she wanted to say, but the words choke in her throat. _We lost Shaw, and I lost Madi._

He seemed to understand anyway because he pressed her against him, his arms around her. "We'll find a way to get back to the ship", he told her, and she nodded without conviction.

She closed her eyes for a few seconds and when she opened them, she noticed Emori and Jackson running toward them.

"All of the others at the campfire are either dead", Emori said, sounding a little out of breath, "or they disappeared." She coldly glanced at Murphy holding Clarke. 

Clarke didn't want to cause more strain between Murphy and Emori, so she moved away from him. She really thought Emori wasn't in love with him anymore because that's what she had been saying to Murphy since they both woke up from cryo, but that clearly wasn't what her eyes were telling right now. 

"We scouted around, and we're clear for now," Emori continued. 

"There may be more of them", Echo replied, "so we need to stay vigilant." She paused for a moment. "Bellamy, what happened? How did they get to destroy the transport ship?"

Clarke turned to Bellamy. He was staring guiltily at the dead person on the ground, the one he killed to save her, his hands trembling. "I let them...", he said.

Echo frowned her eyes a little, confused. "You let them? I don't- I don't get what you're-"

"We just couldn't stop them in time," Clarke said hastily before he could say something else. She didn't know if she was still feeling resentful at him, but she couldn't let him take the blame alone. After all, he only had to make a choice because she couldn't defend herself. "This _one_ ", she pointed the hooded person standing on their knees whom Miller had a gun on, "had an explosive."

Echo tilted her head to the side, perplexed, as if she was studying her. Her eyes landed on the wound on Clarke's throat, then on the dead body near them, then on the deep cut on their neck, then on the knife lying in the middle of the red blood spilled everywhere, and then on Bellamy's trembling hands covered in dark and red blood. Her eyes widened with a realisation, and she took a step back from him. 

"You let them..." she said, her lips twitching almost imperceptibly. "You had to make a choice, and you chose _her_." 

Clarke felt Murphy flinch beside her, and she saw Emori shook her head as if she couldn't believe Echo's words. 

"Is this true?" Emori asked Bellamy, furious, but he didn't answer. "You made that speech about how the transport ship was our priority, about how we needed to be ready to sacrifice ourselves if we had to make the choice between its safety and ours, but that was all bullshit, wasn't it?"

"I-I just-" Bellamy faltered, his eyes blinking at Clarke, "I-I couldn't-", but Echo cut him.

"We should call Raven," she said, turning her back to him. "We have to tell her about Shaw. There's no way he made it alive, the transport ship is completely destroyed."

Emori nodded, and she reached for the radio strapped to her belt. "Raven?" Silence. "Raven? Jordan?" Silence again. "Do someone hear me?" She tried to make contact with them for a couple more minutes before giving up.

"Maybe those weird lights around us are fucking up the radios," Murphy said. "What are they anyway, huh?" He glanced around him. "I won't lie, they give me the creeps." He tried to touch one of the strings of green light, but it - gracefully - moved away from him. "What the-"

"It's like they're dancing around us," Jackson said with curiosity in his eyes. "Could they be sentient or something?"

"Sentient?" Murphy snorted. "Yeah, sure."

Emori rolled her eyes. "Really, John? We've been stuck in a time loop, or whatever that was, for fourteen days, and Shaw thought we were only gone for three days! For all we know, these lights could be _aware_."

"They could be reacting to stimuli without being aware." 

"Then, how do you explain they didn't appear when we landed but they all came out of nowhere the moment the transport ship came back? That's not reacting to stimuli."

"What do we know, huh? Maybe they only appear at night? Maybe those creepy cultist people control them? Maybe-"

"That's enough," Echo said firmly, "the both of you."

Murphy crossed his arms, and Emori glared at him, but they didn't say anything else. 

"What are we supposed to do now?" Jackson asked. 

"We need to-" Echo began to say, but Miller cut her.

"I can't help but feel as if we're only in this situation because of you, Bellamy." He clenched his lips together in frustration, keeping his gun on the person who had thrown the explosive.

"It's because we are," Emori said bitterly. 

Echo turned to Bellamy. "How could you let them blow up the transport ship?" she asked him quietly, sounding hurt and disappointed. 

Clarke knew how guilty Bellamy must be feeling right now, and she felt her heart sink only looking at how Echo, Emori, Miller and Jackson were all staring at him as if he was a failure. She was about to say something when Murphy spoke. 

"Do you really think you wouldn't have made the same choice he did?" he asked them drily. 

Echo raised an eyebrow, glancing at Clarke. "The transport ship was more valuable than anyone else's life. Its safety was our priority so, yes, I wouldn't have made the same choice."

"Dare to tell me you would have let Bellamy die if you had to make the choice between _his_ life and the transport ship's safety." 

She bore Murphy's gaze with a neutral expression on her face, but she wasn't fooling anyone. They all knew she wouldn't let Bellamy die.

"That's what I thought," Murphy said when he assumed she wouldn't answer. He turned to Miller. "And you, would you have been fine with letting Jackson die?"

Miller swallowed while looking at Jackson. His eyes fell to the ground, and he didn't answer, so Murphy continued. 

"I know I would have saved Cl-" He suddenly blinked at Clarke, seeming troubled, then he looked away. "I would have saved any one of you because we're a family, aren't we?" 

"Not all of us are," Echo replied coldly. 

Clarke felt as if she had just been punched in the stomach. That's what it really was about, wasn't it? The problem was not that Bellamy let the transport ship explode, it was that he let the transport ship explode to save _her_. She knew Emori, Miller and Jackson weren't angry at her for betraying them in Shadow Valley, but it didn't mean they wanted her as a part of their family. They talked to her sometimes, they even laughed with her, but that was about it. Murphy was the only one who really wanted to include her and to spend time with her. He was the only one who wanted to be her friend. 

"I know Nathan and I weren't with you in space, but-" Jackson said, sounding a little hurt, but Echo cut him before he could finish.

"I wasn't talking about you." 

They all turned to Clarke, and she felt their stare burning her. She realised it was the moment she was supposed to defend herself, to stand her ground against Echo, but she couldn't do it, and it pained her. 

The Clarke before Praimfaya would have done it... the Clarke who was a little sassy, and confident, and who knew her own value, she would have talked. But the Clarke who spent six years isolated from her friends, who waited for them to come back only to feel more isolated once they did, she couldn't talk. 

She couldn't talk because she lost her sassiness, and she lost her confidence, and she had no idea of her own value anymore and, deep down inside her, she knew Echo was right. She wasn't part of their family, and she never was. 

They always counted on her to make the hard choices, to save them, but they never really treated her as one of them. They treated her as a leader, as Wahneda, as if she was invincible, and when she needed a shoulder to lean on, only Bellamy was there. He was the one who always forgave her, who always wanted to share the burden of the hard choices with her.

She lost Bellamy's shoulder to lean on. She had Murphy's though, but it wasn't the same. He wasn't Bellamy, and a part of herself couldn't help but fear he would abandon her as soon as Emori would take him back. She cared about Murphy, more than she ever thought she would, and she didn't want to lose him too, but he only became friend with her because he felt lonely, didn't he? He belonged with them, not with her, and the day he will realise it, he will leave. And she would be alone, again. 

Even if she never really belonged with her friends, it didn't stop her from sacrificing everything she had for them - even her own life. 

She never perceived herself as a hero, and that's why she made her friends the heroes of the stories she told Madi. And maybe they made her the hero of the story when they were in space, but she clearly didn't live up to their expectations. 

She could have stayed in cryo, and no one would have missed her. Murphy would have gotten closer with someone else, and Bellamy wouldn't have to feel guilty everytime he looked at her. 

Even her mother didn't give a fuck about her.

Everyone would be better if she wasn't there, but she needed to be there. For Madi. 

Shit, she was pissed now, and seeing Echo's cold stare on her was only making her angrier by the second. 

_We make the decisions together, all of us._

_But I wasn't there._

_Why would you be, Clarke? We don't ned a traitor._

_I only betrayed you to save my child!_

_She didn't need saving! You just didn't want her to be the Commander, so you left Bellamy to die in the fighting pits for putting the flame in her head!_

_And you tried to choke me to death because of it! In front of my daughter! Leaving Bellamy behind to die will always be my biggest regret, but do you even feel sorry for almost killing me?_

_I don't._

She didn't think she had the strenght to reply, but she was now so pissed at everyone and everything that it was hard not to. She took a step toward Echo, looking at her straight in the eye. 

"Why would I want to be part of the family of someone who tried to choke me to death and who only stopped because she was told to by a twelve years old girl?", she told Echo so bitterly, and so angrily, that she almost didn't recognize her own voice. 

Echo took a step back, her eyes wide and panicked only for a moment, and she glanced at Bellamy before getting her eyes back on Clarke. She opened her mouth, and closed it, and Clarke realised how much Echo did not expect Clarke to call her out on this. 

There was a moment of silence as everyone took in Clarke's words.

"You tried to kill her?" Bellamy asked Echo with what sounded like a mix of confusion, anger and despair in his voice. It was the first time since the explosion that he wasn't only passively reacting to what was happening around him. 

"I don't-"

"In front of Madi?"

"Yes, but-"

"How could you?"

"She left you to die in the fighting pits!"

"And I left her to die in Praimfaya, and no one tried to kill me for it!"

"It's not the same!"

"Isn't it?"

"You had no choice but to leave her to save us, but she had a choice!"

"Did she, really? Because the way I see it, I sacrificed the person I loved-" he paused, "I let her die so I could save my family, and it's only fair she let me die so she could save hers!" 

They both stopped talking, and the tension between the both of them was tangible. Bellamy had his jaw clenched, and he had a hand running through his hair. Echo was staring almost impassively at him, her lips trembling a little. 

Clarke could only blink at Bellamy, trying to grasp the meaning of his words. 

_I sacrificed the person I loved._

He did love her, didn't he? But she already knew that. 

Madi told her so many times, but a part of herself didn't believe he could love her after she hurt him so much. Tondc, Mount Weather, the Conclave... she didn't deserve his love. 

In the corridor the night before the landing, when they were leaning against a wall and he softly touched her lip, with his eyes haunted, she felt it. The love he had for her before Praimfaya, and the love he never really let go of because he felt guilty for letting her sacrifice herself. 

He loved her, but then he fell in love with Echo. 

So, yeah, she was doing the right thing by trying to move on from the Bellamy she was in love with. Maybe there remained some glimpses of his heart, but they only were remnants of a past he left behind with her in Praimfaya. Theses glimpses, they were there because of the guilt he couldn't let go of. He only saved her ealier because he couldn't bare the guilt of letting her die a second time. 

He never forgave himself, and now he only needed her forgiveness so he could move on from the love he had for her. 

If they get to live another day on this moon, she will give him the forgiveness he needed. 

Then, maybe he will be ready for them to be friends. 

She sighed, and-

"We'll talk more about this later, Bellamy," Echo said with unease in her voice. "Now, we need to get some informations if we want to survive on this moon." She started to walk toward the man but Bellamy grabbed her arm, stopping her, and they exchanged a look. 

"I can't trust you right now," he told her. 

"Because of what I did, really?"

"Yes, and because you didn't tell me about it."

"Bellamy-" but he cut her.

"I'm not changing my mind." 

Echo stared at him with hurt in her eyes, but she didn't reply. Bellamy barely glanced at her before he walked and removed the dark hood that was conceiling the person's face. 

Clarke assumed he was a man as he had very masculine traits. He had very dark eyes, and he was bald, but nothing else about him stood out. He was just silently standing on his knees, staring impassively at the transport ship burning in the distance. 

"Who are you?" Bellamy asked him, but he didn't get an answer. "Are you with Eligius?" 

The man kept silent, and it made her angrier than she already was. She could see him throwing the explosive again and again in her head, and she thought of Shaw who died because he couldn't abandon them while they were being attacked. She thought of Madi now stuck in space, and she thought of the possibility of never seeing her again, and she clenched her fists. 

Bellamy crossed his arms. "We know you understand english, so tell us why you attacked us." Silence. "We lost our transport ship, and we lost a friend in the explosion. Tell us-"

"He won't tell us," Clarke cut him, "not willingly anyway." 

She tried to reach for Bellamy's eyes, but they were clearly avoiding hers. She sighed and walked to the man, keeling down in front of him. She reached for the knife strapped near her ankle and put it on his throat, but he didn't react. 

"Clarke, what the-" she heard Murphy exclaimed, but she ignored him.

"Tell us who you are," she ordered the man, but he didn't flinch. "How many of you are there?"

She saw him smirk almost imperceptibly, and she lost it a little. She thrust the tip of the knife into his skin, and a drop of red blood ran down his neck. 

He glanced at her. His eyes were so dark that they appeared black, and they were cold, devoid of emotion. It made her shiver when she noticed the green lights weren't reflecting in them. 

"How many of you are there?" she repeated.

The man moved closer to her, so the tip of the knife penetrated a little further into his skin, his cold eyes challenging her.

"Clarke," Murphy said, and she felt his hand on her shoulder, "I know you're angry, but we're not doing this." He was looking at her disapprovingly, and it surprised her coming from him. 

She stood up to face him, the knife in her left hand, frowning her eyes with hurt. "They waited for us to call the transport ship so they could blow it up." She paused. "He killed Shaw."

She glanced at Bellamy, but he seemed back to his passive self. He still had his arms crossed, and he was staring at her as if he was trying to understand her but couldn't. 

Murphy took a step toward her. "He did, but we're not torturing him to get answers." His face was now so close to hers that she could see the green lights reflecting in his eyes.

"Why not? It wouldn't be the first time we lose a piece of our humanity." 

Murphy looked at her, confused. "We always did what we had to to survive, but we're not these people anymore. That's not how we get to be the good guys."

"We can't be the good guys if we're dead." 

She thought of when she saw Eligius in the sky, when she knew she had to do whatever it took to protect Madi. She used one of them as a bait to kill some of the others, and she would do it again if she had to because that's who she had become. _I kept thinking of who we were, but I need to accept that we both changed._ Bellamy wasn't the one driven by his heart anymore, she was. 

And right now, her heart was screaming her to do whatever she needed to to get back to Madi. 

"We need informations if we want to survive on this moon," she continued, "if we want to get back to the ship, and he won't give them to us willingly."

"I thought you wanted to do better this time."

"I do, but we don't have a choice here."

"We always have a choice." 

"Either we get some informations out of him, or we don't and we die on this moon."

"That can't be the only way to-"

"How are we not on the same page here, Murphy? We need to do this if we want to survive. Isn't surviving the only thing that matters to you?"

He frowned, his eyes blinking with hurt and surprise. "I do care more than I probably should about my own survival, but it's not the only thing I care about." 

He stared deeply into her eyes for a moment, trying to read her. As she couldn't bear his gaze any longer, she turned her head to the side but he took her chin in his fingers and softly turned her head back to him. 

"You don't care about our survival, Clarke," he said. "You care about getting back to Madi."

"I don't-"

"Be honest and tell me you're not torturing him only so you could find a way to get back to her." 

Murphy was right, of course. She wouldn't want to torture this man if she had Madi with her right now. He sighed, reading the answer in her eyes, and removed his fingers from her chin.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." He paused, shaking his head as if he didn't want to be right about her motivations. "And how did it go the last time you only cared about her, huh?"

He sounded bitter, and it hurt her because she thought he understood what she went through. They talked about her relationship with Madi for what seemed like hours that night in the lounge. He knew how much she cared about her. "She's all I have, Murphy."

There was a moment of silence as he stared at her with his eyes frowned. " _Had_. She's all you _had_."

"Now's really not the time for-" Miller tried to interrupt them, but Murphy ignored him. 

"What am I to you, Clarke?" he asked loudly, sounding a little pissed. 

"You're my friend-"

"Am I, really? Because it feels like you don't care about me." 

She stared at him for an instant, confused, and she realised his reaction wasn't only about her torturing someone to get back to Madi. It was about more than that, but she couldn't tell what. 

"Did I do something to piss you off?" she asked him bluntly, and his eyes widened. He swallowed, and he blinked, but he didn't answer. 

"Now's really not the time for whatever is going on between the both of you!" Miller exclaimed, sounding a little annoyed. 

"They slept together," Emori said bitterly, "that's what's going on."

Clarke turned her head to Emori so quickly that she felt a wave of dizziness. No one talked for a moment, and she tried not to glance at Bellamy but it was hard not to. He had this horrified look plastered to his face, again, and it made her heart sting. 

"Well, I didn't see _that_ coming," Jackson said, breaking the silence. 

"I can't believe you just-" Murphy started to yell at Emori, but she cut him.

"I should have tell them the day before the landing when I learned about it," Emori told him drily. "What you both did, it isn't affecting only the two of you!"

Clarke felt someone's stare on her, and she noticed Echo was looking suspiciously at Bellamy, Murphy and her as if she was recalling something. 

"And it's clearly affecting what we are doing now!"

There was a long moment of silence, then Murphy smirked. "Are you jealous?"

"I'm not-" 

"Guys, really?" Miller cut them, really annoyed this time. "We need to decide what we are doing with him." He made a move with his head toward the man, his gun still pointed at him. 

Murphy sighed, looking away from Emori, and he turned to Clarke. 

"We're not on Earth anymore, Clarke. I know I joked about meeting some aliens, but the truth is that it is we who are the aliens on this moon. We landed on their home. We can only assume these people did what they had to to protect themselves from us, to survive." He paused. "Isn't it what _you_ did too when Eligius landed in Shadow Valley?"

She was ready to snap back at him but, as she took his words in, she realised he was making a fair point. She was angry and ready to torture this man, but he only did what she did too. She sighed, bitting her bottom lip. "You're right. We- I don't get to torture him."

She calmed herself down, and she kneeled back in front of the man. She made sure he saw her strapping the knife back near her ankle. 

"Were you trying to protect yourselves?" she asked him almost gently. 

He kept quiet, but she contined. 

"I think you saw us landing, but the transport ship took off before you could get to us. So, you decided to stay hidden, to observe us, and to follow us in the forest. I don't know how you did it, but you created this loop we got stuck in for fourteen days. I assume you did because we only got out of the forest after we talked about calling the transport ship back." 

She paused, trying to get the pieces back together. 

"We were exhausted, and worried about the food we had left, and creeped out by the forest, and you- you knew we would call the transport ship back immediatly after seeing the green fabric tied around the solar beacon and realising we where back to where we started. Did I get that right?"

The man raised an eyebrow.

"You heard us talking a couple of times about the hundreds of people asleep in our ship. You couldn't take the chance for them to get on the moon too, and I get it. You only wanted to protect your people. I would have done the same. In fact, as Murphy pointed out, I did the same, but-"

She sighed, knowing she had to choose the right words. 

"I'm sorry I threatened you. I shouldn't have. I was angry because you blew our transport ship up, because we lost a friend in the explosion, and I lost sight of the fact that we landed in your home. But, you have to understand, we are _not_ your enemies. Whoever you are, if there are more of you, I'm sure we can strike a deal. We only want to find someplace safe to live peacefully, someplace where we won't bother you."

She waited a long moment for him to reply, but he didn't. She was about to get up when she saw him suddenly convulsing and falling to the ground, dead. 

Then, two things happened at the same time. A green light came out of the man's mouth, fading away, and the strings of light around them completely disappeared. 

"What the hell?" Murphy said. 

They all stared at the man's body, shocked and frightened, as the planet in the dark sky was casting a mellow greenish light on them. 

 

.....

 

They were all silently sitting on their sleeping bag around the campfire, glancing every now and then at the transport ship burning in the distance. It's been a few hours since the explosion, and the flames were starting to die out. 

After the man convulsed and died, they searched on the bodies of the people who attacked them, hoping to find something that could help them understand, but they found nothing. They were exhausted, defeated, and the darkness of the night was scaring them. They had no idea what to do but to go back to the campfire and wait for the morning to come. Bellamy offered himself to stay awake while they slept, but they refused as no one felt like they could close their eyes after what happened. Then, they tried to reach for Raven many times, but she never answered. 

So, they sat in silence for hours until it began to rain. 

"We're going to die on this moon, aren't we?" Jackson asked, breaking the silence. 

"We won't," Bellamy answered. "When the morning comes, we walk and we find a way to get back to the ship. These people who attacked us were humans, so they most likely were descendants of Eligius III." He paused. "And, if they were, it means there could be a transport ship somewhere."

"The mountains are our best guess," Emori said, "but we'll have to go through the forest again."

Miller shook his head. "It'll get us nowhere, we'll only get stuck in the loop again."

"Maybe we're still stuck in it", Murphy said. 

"We're not," Clarke replied, smiling. "It's the first time it rains since we landed."

They all nodded with relief, realising she was right, and there was a long moment of silence.

"We need to trust each other if we want to make it alive," Bellamy almost whispered. "We are a family, _all of us_ , and we need to let go of the past for now." He glanced at Echo. "We all want the same thing, and it is to find a place for our people to live."

Clarke stared at him, feeling as if his words were hollow. Whatever he could say, she didn't feel as if she was a part of their family. 

"I'm sorry," he continued with guilt in his eyes, "for letting the transport ship blow up."

Murphy, who was sitting beside Bellamy, put a hand on his shoulder. "It's fine, man. Your speech about saving the transport ship at any cost was great, but it was bold of us to think we could have done it at the expense of the people we love."

Emori snorted. "Since when do you care about the people you love anyway? Letting the transport ship blow up isn't the survivor's move."

He shrugged. "Who said saving a person you love isn't the survivor's move?"

Emori raised an eyebrow, and it took her a while before she replied. 

"What the fuck is going on with you, John?" she asked him seriously. 

"Maybe I want to be a better version of myself."

Emori was looking at him, but he wasn't looking back at her. He was staring at Clarke, and she felt her cheeks heat up as she couldn't decipher the emotion in his eyes. 

"Maybe we all need to be a better version of ourselves," he continued with bitter in his voice. 

No one talked after that.

The fire ravaging the transport ship died out when the morning came. They all got up, and they went to see if they could salvage some stuff from the ashes. The rain stopped as they were looking through the debris.

They only found Shaw's remains, and they dug a hole for him. 

"He could have went back to space," Jackson said. "He could have saved his own life, but he stayed for us." He paused. "We won't forget what you did for us, Miles. May we meet again."

"May we meet again", Clarke, Bellamy, Murphy and Miller repeated. 

Echo and Emori stayed silent. 

After a moment, they decided it was time to try to reach the mountains again. Clarke grabbed her backpack and, when she turned, she was breathless. In the blue sky, above the mountains, there were not one, nor two, but three rainbows overlapping each other. The two suns were making the colors in them so vivid it seemed surreal. 

She suddenly felt Bellamy's presence beside her, and she caught the glimpse of a smile on his lips.

"Ready?" he asked her. 


	12. Afraid to lose you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was supposed to be waaay longer. I just didn't get the chance to edit the second half (where the plot moves forward), and I really wanted to update now that I had the time to. Hope you enjoy anyway!

They walked for hours and hours under the twisted trees, following the stream and glancing from time to time to the rainbows above the mountains in the distance. The air was humid and heavy, so they had to no choice but to take plenty of breaks throughout the day.

When the sun started to set down, Clarke peeked over her shoulder while walking. Bellamy had spent the entire day walking behind her, behind everyone else, rather than leading the way through the forest with Echo as he did the past two weeks. 

He had his eyes on the ground, seeming lost in his thoughts. _I should go talk to him_ , she thought. They hadn't had a real talk since he came back from space, and they needed to sort their shit out if they wanted to be friends. But then, will he talk to her about his feelings? 

The only time he had revealed a piece of how he felt was the night before the landing, when he was fairly drunk. _I missed you, Clarke, every day for six years. I had to learn how to live without you, but- I don't- I can't lose you again. If you want me to be your friend, then I will be._ Only, the way he had lightly trailed his thumb over her skin, to her lip, it... it felt more than friendly, and it was haunting her. 

She told him, that night, that she used to love him. She just skipped the part where she never stopped loving him, but still. And, last night, he admitted that he used to love her too. 

They needed to talk about the feelings they had for each other, about the relationship they had before-

Actually, now that she thought about it, had they ever had a real talk? like, ever? It felt as if everytime they were about to be real with each other, they... weren't. 

She risked another peek over her shoulder as he looked up at her, and-

 _Shit._ He looked so attractive in his soaking shirt, strands of sweaty dark hair stuck on his forehead, his deep brown eyes sparkling in the golden red light of the suns. 

She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, and she stumbled against a root. 

As she caught herself before she fell, she instantly felt Bellamy's warmth beside her. He had a hand sliding on her forearm, and it made her shiver as a heat spread through her whole body. 

She took a deep breath to calm herself down a little, but the air smelled of damp earth and of his sweat, and, yeah, it didn't help at all. 

She moved away from him a little abrubtly, trying to regain her senses. He was staring at her worringly, but she just couldn't bear his eyes on her any longer. She was feeling so hot that she feared she might melt right there.

"Clarke-" But she was already walking away. 

_So much for talking_ , she thought angrily at herself. 

How could she hope to be friends with him if- _shit_. She just couldn't stop thinking about them on the ground, his lips so close to hers, and it was driving her crazy. She just wanted to ran back to him and kiss him, to feel him against her, just once, just to know how good it'd feel, just to get it him out of her system. 

But she couldn't.

He may have loved her for a few months, and he may have had a hard time dealing with her 'death', and he may have missed her every day for six years, but none of that mattered. 

Because he was in love with Echo, wasn't he?

And maybe he was a little mad at Echo right now but-

Bellamy - _this_ Bellamy - will certainly forgive Echo for nearly choking her to death and not feeling bad about it, because this was the same Bellamy who forgave Echo for pretty much everything. He forgave Echo for blowing up Mount Weather and therefore killing Gina. He forgave Echo for almost killing Octavia on that cliff and for trying to kill her during the Conclave.

If he could forgive Echo for having a hand in the death of a girl he loved, and for almost killing his sister more than once, it won't be hard for him to forgive her for what happened with Clarke. _Because I'm not part of his family_ , she thought. _Because he cares about her more than he cares about me._

And that was to be expected, wasn't it? After all, they only knew each other for a few months before he went to space. She spent six years thinking they were _Bellamy and Clarke_ , but, damn, had she ever been this wrong?

As she continued to walk, she caught herself hoping he would go after her. But he didn't, and it didn't surprise her. 

An hour later or so, the sky was now completely dark as clouds were obscuring the green planet. They stopped walking as soon as they found a spot where they could sleep, feeling exhausted. 

"Tonight, we _all_ sleep," Bellamy decided while Echo was starting a fire further away from them, "as none of us did last night."

"What about those people who attacked us?" Emori asked. "There may be more of them." 

"We don't know that, and-" 

"Still, someone needs to be on watch," Miller interjected. 

"Even if there are more of them, they got what they wanted, didn't they? They blew up the transport ship." Bellamy paused. "I agree the safest option is to have someone on watch for the night, but we are all completely exhausted. We walked for fourteen days with barely any sleep! We didn't sleep at all last night after we were attacked, and we just walked the entire day! We _all_ need to rest." 

They nodded, knowing he was right. It's not like any of them had the energy left to keep their eyes open for a couple more hours anyway. 

"Those who attacked us," Bellamy continued, glancing at Echo who was walking back to them, "they weren't armed. If they hadn't sneaked on us, they wouldn't have get to-" 

"But what if they sneak on us again?" Miller asked. "What if they sneak on us while we sleep?" 

"We'll have to take the chance." 

There was a moment of silence as they all took in the meaning of his words. 

"Guess I'll sleep with my gun then," Murphy said, then he went to unroll his sleeping bag near the fire. 

Emori rolled her eyes and followed him, but she put her sleeping bag across the fire from him. 

"Bellamy," Echo almost whispered, "can we talk in private?" 

"Right now, I just want to sleep," he answered with unease in his voice. "We'll talk tomorrow." 

Echo tilted her head almost imperceptibly, considering him. "Don't you want to eat a little before going to sleep though? We could-" 

Clarke noticed Jackson suddenly seemed nervous. 

"I don't, I-" Bellamy sighed, "I really just want to sleep." 

"It's fine" she said, as impassive as always, "I'll just go eat with Emori then." She left without glancing back at him. 

"Bellamy," Jackson said, his voice trembling a little, "I just thought-" he paused, "I know you're tired, but I've been wanting to talk to you about the dried algea-" 

"Does it have to be right now?" 

"It's just-" He seemed uncomfortable. "We barely have any left, and it's making me anxious." He exchanged a meaningful look with Miller. 

"I get it, but there's nothing we can do about it now," Bellamy replied. "We'll figure it out tomorrow." 

Jackson shook his head, seeming a little distraught. "What if we don't figure it out? What if we don't get to the mountains in time, and I- I can't go through that again-" 

"Hey," Miller said softly, "look at me." He gently cupped Jackson's face in both his palms. "We'll be fine." Jackson nodded, and Miller put his forehead on his. "I promise." 

Clarke stared at the both of them for a moment, puzzled, and- It was about the dark year, wasn't it? She only knew about it because her mother told her, but Bellamy... 

She glanced at him and, yeah, he clearly didn't know about the dark year. He was staring at his friends with his eyes frowned in confusion. 

"This isn't about the dried algea," he deduced. "What's it really about?" 

Jackson moved away from Miller. "It's nothing, I-" he pinched the bridge of his nose nervously, "I'm tired, that's all."

Clarke realised Jackson wasn't ready to talk about what he went through, but Bellamy wasn't buying his answer. 

"They just-" Clarke said hastily, "My mom told me they had to ration the food for a while in the bunker, and it's understandable that they don't want to go through that again." She felt guilty for hiding the truth to Bellamy, but it wasn't her truth to tell. It was Jackson and Miller's, and they weren't ready to reveal it. 

Bellamy eyes were on her, studying her deeply, and she felt a heat in her cheeks. God, she was grateful for the clouds obscuring the sky right now. 

"I'll go sleep-" she said, then she quickly walked away toward the campfire, deciding to plant her sleeping bag next to Murphy's. 

"Mind if I sleep here?" she asked him hesitantly. 

"Whatever you want, Clarke." He was already in his sleeping bag, his back turned to her. 

She tried to talk to him more than once today, but she felt as if he was pushing her away and it was hurting her a lot. He was there for her when no one else was - not even her own mother -, and, right now, she missed their weird frienship in a way she couldn't quite grasp. He barely spoke to her the past two weeks, and he'd been ignoring her since last night. _What am I to you, Clarke? Because it feels like you don't care about me._ She lied down on her side, facing his back. 

Bellamy, Jackson and Miller were still standing further away from the campfire, their voices a little buried by the sound of the fire crackling at her feet. She could hear Echo and Emori talking quietly, but she couldn't decipher a word they were saying. 

"I'm not sure what I did wrong, but-" She sighed. "I do care about you, Murphy. I wished I didn't because you're such an asshole sometimes, but I do." 

He didn't reply, nor move. 

"And you were right. Madi's _not_ all I have anymore because I- I have you, don't I? I know that we've been into cryo for a hundred and twenty-five years but, to me, it's only been a month or so since you all came back from space. I'm not used to care about someone else than her, but-" 

She paused, recalling Murphy's words the night before. _Maybe we all need to be a better version of ourselves._

Had she become a better version of herself since Praimfaya? Or was the old Clarke, the one driven by her head, the better version? 

On one hand, she'd lie if she said she didn't miss the old Clarke, the one who wasn't blinded by her emotions, who didn't run away from the danger, who wouldn't hesitate to make the hard choices. The old Clarke was way far than perfect, but she wouldn't have attacked Dioza's men without knowing who she was facing, she wouldn't have betrayed her friends, and she wouldn't have let Bellamy to die in the fighting pits. 

On the other hand, her past self wouldn't have hesitated to force the Flame on a child, on Madi - as she did with Luna -, because she never hesitated to do anything necessary for the survival of her people. Tondc, Mount Weather. When she sacrificed Finn to avoid a war, and when she was ready to let her own mother hang herself to take down ALIE. The only time she flinched to do the necessary was when she had to shoot Bellamy to keep him from opening the bunker, when she realised she could never hurt him because she was in love with him - and she'd been for a long time, she just never wanted to acknowledge her feelings. 

What if she needed to find a middle ground between her head and her heart? 

"I'm ready to try." 

Murphy still had his back to her, ignoring her. She felt a tear falling down her eyes and running down her temple. 

"Please don't push me away," she whispered, and he turned to her. 

They both looked at each other for a moment, then Clarke started to cry silently. She couldn't lose him, not when he was the only friend she had right now. 

"When everything went to chaos last night," he finally said, quietly, "I lost sight of you, and it scared the shit out of me." 

"It scared the shit out of me too, but-" 

"No, that's not-" he sighed, looking agitated. "It scared the shit out of me because, for that tiniest moment, I cared more about your life than I did about mine." 

She blinked a few times. "That's... unexpected coming from you." 

"It sure is." He was looking at her as if he was waiting for something, but she wasn't sure what to make out of that information. Then he smirked, but it was more of an anxious reaction than a genuine one. "You don't get it, do you?" 

"I don't-" 

"I think I felt something when you asked me to stay with you the night before the landing, but I-" he sighed, "I shrugged it off. I tried not to think about it for the fourteen fucking days we were stuck in that creepy forest, but I couldn't and it just pissed me off." 

"Murphy-" 

"I wanted to talk to you about it because I assumed you would have a fucking explanation-" 

"I do-" 

"but you were always desperately looking at Bellamy, and-" 

"Murphy-"

"it just pissed me off even more when I realised you only cared about Madi again-" 

"I-" 

"Don't, Clarke, I- I need you to hear what I have to say because it's been driving me crazy for the past two weeks." She nodded, unsure of how to feel right now. "When everyone was shitting on Bellamy for saving you, I just had to take his side because I knew I would have saved Emori, and... when I did take his side, I realised I would have saved you too." 

"You said you would have saved every one of us because-" 

"Yeah, but that was bullshit and you know it." He shook his head, laughing bitterly. "I'm not that selfless, the transport ship was our only way out of this shithole." 

"But-" 

"It just- it fucking scared the shit out of me when I realised I had feelings for Emori because it meant I couldn't only think about myself anymore. I couldn't only survive by myself, I had to do it with her. And yeah, it fucked me up to think about someone else's survival, but I did it anyway." 

"Murphy-" 

"Stop, just- hear me out, please. When it wasn't about surviving anymore, when it was just about living, I lost it. I couldn't do it, and I was an asshole to her. We tried to work on our relationship when we came back on Earth, but she left me anyway. I don't know if she left me because she didn't love me anymore, or because she wanted to piss me off. I just know that-" he paused, "that you've been there for me, on the ship, when I needed it the most. Clarke, what if-" 

"It's not what you think it is, Murphy. How you feel about me, about us, it's only loneliness." 

"You can't know that." 

"I do know, because I know you well enough." She took a moment to make sense of her thoughts. "You're just trying to push her away because she hurt you, and because you're afraid she'll hurt you again if you fight for her. You only think you have feelings for me because you see me as a way out of the mess you made. You're afraid to work through your issues, and if- if you go with me instead of her, you won't have to face the demons you couldn't face when you were in space." 

There was a long moment of silence between them as they both looked at each other. 

"Then I guess we're not that different, you and I," he whispered. 

"What-" 

"How do you feel about Bellamy choosing to save you, huh?" 

"He only saved me because he feels guilty for leaving me to die in Praimfaya." 

"He does feel guilty, but he saved you because he loves you." 

"He loves Echo." 

"Maybe he loves you both." She didn't reply, so he continued. "Wanna know what I think, Clarke? I think you're afraid. You told Madi stories about the people you loved because it was a way for you to keep us all alive - to keep him alive. You never told him you loved him because you were afraid to lose him, and you still are. You just don't want to admit it, so you hide your feelings behind all that crap about the both of you loving a- a ghost or whatever that was you said." 

Could he be right? She glanced at Bellamy in the distance, who was absorbed in what seemed like an intense discussion with Jackson and Miller. 

"How pathetic are we?" she asked. 

He laughed a little. "I suppose that's how it goes with cockroaches." 

She didn't reply for a while, and her eyes were starting to feel really heavy. She closed them, and she was slowly drifting away to sleep but, then, she remembered. 

"Emori loves you," she said in a quiet voice. "I saw that spark in her eyes when she looked at you holding me last night. I think she-", she paused, unsure of her train of thoughts. 

"I'm listening", he said. 

"I'm just not sure if I'll make sense-" 

"I'm listening anyway." She still had her eyes closed, but she knew he just smirked. 

"When you were both on the ground, you fought for her, didn't you? When I wanted to test the nightblood on her, I had never seen you so distressed. You tried to get her a place in the bunker but, when you realised she wasn't about to have one, you left with her. You could have just stayed in the bunker yourself, but you didn't. You left so you could both have a chance to live. In space though, you just stopped fighting for her." She paused, trying hard not to fall asleep." Maybe she left you because it was the only way she had to make you fight for her again. Only, you didn't. You told her to fuck off, then you slept with me." 

She didn't know if Murphy replied, because she'd already fell asleep. 

.

_For a long moment, Clarke stared hesitantly at the radio in her left hand._

_"Bellamy?" Her voice was trembling a little, and she felt tears sting in her eyes. "I-"_

_She swallowed, her throat tight._

_"Where are you? It's been six years today, and I-" she paused, putting her forehead in her palm and closing her eyes, "I'm scared."_

_This past year had been so fucking hard._

_She tried the best she could to keep on going._

_She never stopped smiling when staring at the sky above her, when talking to him on the radio, when tucking Madi into bed at night._

_She never stopped hoping that she would get to see him in the sky, coming back to her._

_But the truth was, she'd been falling apart a little more every day._

_When she woke up this morning feeling utterly broken, she had realised she couldn't keep on pretending anymore._

_"I'm scared, Bellamy. I'm scared something happened to you. I'm scared I'll never get to see you again because, shit, I cannot not see you again. I cannot. I cannot."_

_Fuck, it hurt._

_The thought of him never coming back._

_"Please come home."_

_This thought lurking in the back of her mind for the past year, this thought she'd tried so hard to ignore, it was so scary that it made her feel more powerless than she ever felt._

_She hadn't been able to draw since she told him to come home a year ago._

_She could only stare painfully at the many drawings she had hung up all around her house._

_They were all she had left of him - of everyone._

_"Why aren't you home y-yet?"_

_She couldn't stop the tears from falling down her cheeks, and it only made her cry harder._

_"I-I miss you so fucking much, and I-"_

_She really lost him, didn't she? She was sobbing and shaking so badly that she couldn't hold on to the radio any longer. It slipped through her fingers, hitting the ground near her feet._

_"I love you."_

_She just had to say it out loud, just once._

.

Clarke woke up lying on her back. She opened her eyes with difficulty, feeling drained. The morning air was cold and damp, and the the campfire at her feet had died out long ago. Murphy was still sleeping on her left, so she stared at the sight of the two suns rising in the sky above her for a while. 

"Hey." Bellamy's voice was only a whisper, but it startled her. 

She turned her head to her right, to him. He was sitting on his sleeping bag near hers, facing the campfire with his legs bent and his arms leaning against his knees. His hands were cleaning the gun he used the night of the explosion, but his eyes were on her. 

She blinked, feeling vulnerable. He wasn't even this close to her, but the way he was deeply staring at her as she lied on her back felt as intimate as when he had his lips nearly on hers. 

"Hey." 

He smiled softly, and she smiled back. He was even more beautiful in the morning light, his eyes puffy with sleep and his hair a little messy. 

When she got out of her sleeping bag, she instantly felt the cold and damp air piercing through her skin. She shivered, crossing her arms around her. 

"Here." Bellamy took out his sweater, and he held it out to her. 

He had a black shirt underneath, and her eyes briefly landed on his upper arms. _Shit_. She swallowed, trying to brush off the heat she was suddenly feeling - again - in her body. 

"I'm fine-" 

He raised an eyebrow, doubting her. 

"I could just start a fire," she suggested. 

"You'd wake up the others." 

_Right, the others._ She had completely forgotten about them since she heard him say 'hey' in such a low whisper. 

"Take it." 

She finally gave in. The sweater was warm on her fingers, and it was warm on her body when she put it on. The scent of him instantly envelopped her, and it only worsened the heat. She blushed, and she couldn't hide the red on her cheeks this time. 

"Thank you," she managed to say. 

Bellamy nodded, and swallowed, and neither of them dared to talk for a while. Then, his eyes went down to the cut on her throat. He opened his mouth then closed it, looking down at the gun in his hand with a sudden interest. 

_Talk to him_ , she thought. _Say something, anything._

"I love it, the sketchbook you gave me." 

He froze, keeping his eyes on the gun. 

"The color reminds me of the sky at night, of all the nights I spent hoping to-", she paused, gathering her courage, "to see you come back in the morning." 

He clenched his jaw, and his eyes slowly went to hers. "Clarke-" 

"You loved me," she whispered, briskly. "How come you never told me?" He was staring at her so intently, she shivered. She knew why she never told him, but why didn't he? 

"I thought-" He started, but he shook his head and briefly glanced at Echo who was sleeping next to Emori. "Have you ever wondered what would have happened if you went to space with us?"

_Every day since I saw the rocket taking off._

"Have you?" 

He swallowed, a flicker of sadness passing through his face. "I left you to die." He blinked, his eyes a little wide, his voice filled with sudden despair. "I left you." 

"You did what you had to." 

"I should have stayed behind with you." 

"You would have died-" 

"It felt like I did, anyway!" He had raised his voice, and he seemed taken aback by his own words. He turned his head back to the campfire. "Shit, I- I need to-", he paused, standing up. "I'm sorry." Then we walked away and disappeared into the forest. 

She noticed her hands were shaking, and her heart was beating wildly. He couldn't just leave after dropping what felt like a bomb to her. She needed to go after him. 

So she did, and she found him after a minute or so. He had his back turned to her, one hand leaning against a tree in front of him for support, the other one clutching his hair. He seemed tormented, almost pained. 

"Bellamy?" She wasn't sure of what to do, so she walked closer to him but stayed a little out of reach. 

Before Praimfaya, she wouldn't have hesitated to go to him, to hug him to make him feel better. But now- 

"I never told you how I felt," she said, "because I was afraid to lose you if I did." She just needed him to know. "But I just lost you anyway." 

He turned to her, and she realised how tormented he really was. She had never seen his jaw so clenched, his eyes so dark and so wild. It was as if he had been trying to hold himself together for a long time but was on the verge of not being able to do so any longer. 

"Do you love _him_?" he asked hoarsely. 

"Who?" But it clicked it her head at the same time she said the word, and it made her feel a little bitter. 

How dare he asked her if she loved Murphy when he was with Echo? 

She took a step forward. "Do you love _her_?" she challenged him. 

He bit his lip. "You didn't answer." 

"Why would you want to know-" but she stopped, recalling a memory. That wasn't the first time she asked him something like that. When she was drunk and she had just slept with Murphy... _You don't get to be mad at me for sleeping with Murphy! Tell me why it bothers you._ "What the hell, Bellamy! You can't-" 

Only, she didn't get to finish her thought because he quickly closed the distance between them, pushing her hard against a tree and crashing his mouth against hers. 

Her eyes fluttered shut and, for a moment, she couldn't move, nor think, nor breathe. She could only feel both his hands palming her face and his lips on hers and, yeah, it did feel intoxicating - so intoxicating, in fact, that it was almost unbearable. 

Then he moved his lips, forcing her mouth open so he could taste her in a needful way, and she moaned while gripping at his shirt to pull him closer. 

"Fuck," he breathed into her mouth, and she shivered with need. 

His deep, husky, voice had lit her whole body on fire, and she desperately needed more of him. "Bellamy-" She just assumed he felt the same way because he started to kiss her more erratically, more urgently, as he pressed himself against her. 

She could now feel how hard he was, and she almost lost it. She slid her hands down his chest, and he groaned, and- 

"Bellamy?" They suddenly heard Echo's worried voice in the distance, searching for him, and they both recoiled from each other. 

Clarke was panting, her heart throbbing violently, and she felt her throat tighten as she realised what they just did. Bellamy was avoiding her stare, looking guilty and angry at himself. 

"Bellamy," she said, but he ran away from her before she could stop him. 


	13. The hardest thing I had to do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had some unexpected time off today, so here is the second half of the previous chapter. Also, I made some minor changes to the story when I finished mapping it out last week, so I had to change the prologue. I made it shorter because I don't want to paint myself into a corner again if I ever decide to change something else in the story.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this (half) chapter as much as I did writing it!

Clarke was completely in shock, and she didn't realise she was letting herself slide down against the tree to the ground. She couldn't quite grasp what just happened, why it happened, but it had felt like wildfire. Bellamy's mouth coming down on hers had felt like an all-consuming flame spreading swiftly through her whole body, sucking the air out of her. It was urgent, and unpredictable, and it had swept everything away in its path only to leave her world suddenly empty and terrifying. 

There was no coming back from that, wasn't it? 

She couldn't tell how long she'd been sitting there, her back leaning against the tree, when she heard Murphy's voice further away behind her. 

"Clarke?" 

His voice startled her, and twigs cracked under her as she jerked suddenly. 

"Where the fuck-?" Murphy was getting closer, and she heard him clicked his gun safety off. 

He walked past her without noticing her, and she hesitated for only a moment before making her presence known. "I'm here," she said in a quiet voice. 

He jolted, quickly turning around with his gun ready to fire in both hands. "For fuck's sake, Clarke!" He lowered his gun, putting the safety back on. "You creeped me out, you know that?" 

He walked to her and probably realised she wasn't about to get up, because he sighed then sat next to her.

"Bellamy-" she murmured after a while. 

"The hell happened, huh? The guy looks like a wreck-"

"He just-" but she shook her head. 

"Tell me?" 

"I can't talk about it."

"Why not?" 

"I just can't."

"Did he say something to you?"

She shook her head. 

"You're making me worried here-"

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine!"

But she kept silent.

"Dammit, Clarke! I fucking woke up and you weren't there!"

"I'm sorry."

"You're sorry? Bellamy wouldn't talk, and I've been looking around for the past half hour." He paused, placing himself closely in front of her so she had no choice but to look at him. "I thought something happened to you."

"I said I'm sorry!"

"It's not enough! We've been attacked two fucking nights ago!" He wasn't yelling, but there was a quiet anger in his voice. "You don't even have your gun with you! What were you thinking?"

"He kissed me!" she blurted out.

Murphy froze for only a moment, his eyes a little wide, then he raised an eyebrow. "That couldn't have went well." She shook her head, and he sighed again. "Just when I thought this little trip couldn't get any worse." Then, his voice softened. "Tell me."

"It just happened so fast. One moment we were talking, and then the next-"

She shivered, recalling the moment she'd caught the sight of him losing the last bit of control he had before he crashed his lips on hers. His eyes were so dark, and so wild, and fuck, it turned her on so bad. She would have let him take her right there, against the tree, and it would have felt nothing but amazing, because it was _Bellamy_. Because-

"I love him, Murphy. Fuck, I'm in love with him."

It must be the first time she said these words out loud in front of someone.

He stared at her with a glimpse of something in his eyes. "I know that."

"He won't even look at me, now." 

He snorted at that. "I'm sure the guy never wanted something so badly than to kiss you-"

"You don't get it, Murphy!" She stood up suddenly, pacing back and forth around the tree. 

Bellamy had changed a whole lot during those six years in space, she knew it, but there was this part of himself which hadn't disappeared. 

"He cheated on Echo, and he will _never_ forgive himself for that."

"Did she caught the two of you, or-"

"She didn't. We just heard her calling his name as she was looking for him, and he left-"

"Knowing Bellamy he probably already told her about it, but-" he slyly raised an eyebrow, "maybe he doesn't have to."

She stopped pacing around to look at him straight in the eye. "Really, Murphy?" 

He shrugged. "What? Don't tell me you didn't like the thrill."

That would be an understatement. 

"Who doesn't have a kink for secret sex, huh?" he continued. 

It made her roll her eyes. "Not everyone has this _loose_ of a moral compass," she replied but, deep down, the thought of having secret sex with Bellamy made her feel a lot of things.

"Well, _that_ hurt."

"I'm sorry, it's just-" she paused, thinking of how much it hurt her when she'd seen Finn with Raven. "I know how it feels to be cheated on."

Murphy got up, and he studied her for a moment. "Are you really comparing Bellamy to Finn right now?" 

"I'm not, I just-"

She ran a nervous hand through her hair. She could try to convince herself that she didn't want for that kiss to happen, but the truth was she did. She had just been waiting for him to kiss her regardless of his relationship with Echo. 

Did that make her a horrible person? 

_Have you ever wondered what would have happened if you went to space with us?_ Hell, she did wonder, and Bellamy and her were together in every fucking one of those scenarios she'd imagined. How could she stop herself from wanting something she thought was meant to be? 

"Do you really think what you said last night?" she asked him hesitantly. "About Bellamy loving both Echo and me?"

"There's only one way to know," he answered. 

"What do you mean?"

"Just-" he seemed thoughtful, "How sure were you about Emori still loving me?" 

"I mean, she didn't tell me but the cold look she gave us when you were holding me and the fact that she told everyone about us sleeping together..."

He nodded, and it was his turn to pace around with agitation. "It took me a while to fall asleep last night," he revealed. "I couldn't stop thinking about what you said, about you and me, about Emori and me, and about how I stopped fighting for her-" He sighed deeply. "It made me wonder... Clarke, what if we both fight for the person we love?

She stared at him with her eyes a little wide. He had stopped pacing around, and he didn't let her reply.

"I mean, sure, I tried to push you away. That's what I fucking do best apart from surviving, I just push people away when..." he trailed off. "But, Clarke, I don't see you only as a way out of the mess I made, or as a way to not face my demons or whatever you said. I just- Fuck, I don't know what _this_ is, " he pointed to the both of them, "but I don't wanna lose it. I know I felt something that night, and it may not be love but it wasn't only loneliness. I don't know what that was, and maybe it'd just fucked me up to sleep with someone else than Emori. I just- I don't think I have to know because I'm fine with this fucked up friendship we have."

She was a little speechless by his sudden outburst, and it took her a moment to reply. "You can thank that bottle of liquor for that friendship. I can barely tolerate you while sober, so-" she said with the beginning of a smirk at the corner of her mouth. 

"I can't be _that_ bad, can I?" he asked, almost offended.

She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. "Well, if I'm being honest-"

"That's how you want to play, huh?"

"That's only the truth, " she teased him.

"You, little-" but he didn't finish, he just smiled. 

There was a moment of silence as they both looked at each other, then he suddely spoke more seriously. 

"You were right, you know? I supplied Emori not to give up on us, but _I_ was the one who gave up long ago. I think-" he paused. "I wanna fight for her again, and I'm gonna get her back." 

"It's about time, don't you think?"

"It is, but not as much as Bellamy and you." 

She crossed her arms. "Bellamy and I, there's nothing between us."

"Cut the crap, Clarke. He just kissed you." 

"I don't even know what that meant! I don't know how to read him, and it's not only because he changed. He just doesn't make sense. One minute he's telling me he wants to be my friend, then the other he's almost pushing me against a wall and trailing his thumb over my lip! He's ignoring me for two fucking weeks, then he's saving me instead of the transport ship! None of it makes sense.

"Bellamy thought you were dead for six years, then he learned you survived only what felt like a month ago! What do you expect? He's lost."

"You don't know that."

"I do know that." 

She must have this really confused look on her face. "How-"

"I talked to him last night when you were asleep."

Her heart skipped a beat. "You what?"

"Don't worry, I didn't tell him about your feelings. We just-" he paused, seeming thoughtful, "we just talked about a lot of things, and you were one of them."

She felt like she had lost the ability to think straight, so she waited for him to continue but he didn't.

"Murphy-"

"You need to tell him you're in love with him." 

"It would only make things worse."

"Or better."

"What's even the point? He's with Echo."

"Because he thought you were dead." 

"Is that what he said to you?"

"He- fuck, Clarke. No one's blind, here. We've all seen how he used to look at you, and how he still looks at you."

"I can't tell him."

"What are you so afraid of, huh? You don't have to live through the stories you told Madi anymore. We came back, _Bellamy_ came back. Do something about it!" 

"I just missed my chance, Murphy-"

"Aren't you done feeling sorry for yourself? Because I know _I_ am!" He had raised his voice a little. "We could have fucking died two nights ago, and we could have died last night when no one was on watch. We don't know a thing about what's going on on this moon. We could die at any moment! I just don't want to die feeling like this, and I don't want to die with Emori thinking she's not worth fighting for." He paused, almost for a dramatic effect. "Do you want to die without having told Bellamy you're in love with him?" 

There was a long moment of silence.

"Why is it so important to you?" she asked.

"I just think I deserve to be happy for once, and I think you do too."

"By breaking up Bellamy's relationship with Echo?" 

"By giving him a choice."

She thought about it for a moment, but- "I'm not sure, Murphy." If she tells Bellamy she's in love with him and he chooses Echo anyway, there was no way they could be friends after that. 

"Think about it at least?"

She nodded. "Let's just go back to the campfire."

She started to walk, and he caught up with her. 

She was getting really nervous at the thought of seeing Bellamy. She could only hope that kissing him did get him out of her system, but she wasn't fooling herself. The way this kiss had felt, it'd changed everything. 

Soon, they arrived at the campfire.

Jackson and Miller were sitting on their sleeping bags on one side, pressed against each other. Echo and Emori were standing on the other side, talking. Bellamy was leaning against a tree further away - and he indeed looked like a wreck.

"I wonder if he spilled the truth yet," Murphy said lowly for only her to hear. 

When Murphy and her appeared from the forest, she instantly felt Bellamy's burning stare on her. She tried not to stare back, but she couldn't resist. 

There was this need again, this heat, spreading through her as she recalled the way he'd moved his lips to open hers, the way he'd slid his tongue in her mouth to taste her, the way she couldn't have stop herself from moaning, the way he'd made her whole body vibrate when he breathed a deep 'fuck' into her mouth, and- shit. She needed to _not_ think about that. She swallowed, noticing he did the same. 

That kiss, there really was no coming back from that. 

The moment seemed to linger, then Jackson spoke. 

"Glad to see you back, Clarke. We got us worried here." 

She smiled at him. 

Then, they all rolled up their sleeping bags. Clarke noticed Echo's confused stare on her, and it made her feel guilty. She tried to brush it off but, yeah, it only made it worse. When they were finished, they grabbed their backpacks and started to walk silently toward the mountains. Echo was leading the way and, once again, Emori tried to reach the mining ship but no one answered.

After a few hours later, they arrived at what seemed like the source of the stream they'd been following these past two weeks. 

"Holy shit!" Murphy exclaimed. 

The stream was coming from a cave with a big natural pool of deep, clear blue water at its entrance. The cave was almost entirely hidden by the twisted trees, and the sight of it all - with all the colors of the leaves - it was breathtaking. 

Murphy was already taking off his shirt, pants and shoes, then he grabbed Emori's hand. "Come on!"

She seemed surprised by the sudden affection, but she didn't remove her hand. "I don't feel like swimming, John." 

But he smiled, and she rolled her eyes. 

"Fine, but only because my hair really needs to be washed."

When she had removed her clothes, keeping her underwear on, he flipped her over his shoulder. 

"John! Don't-" but she just started laughing, and he ran into the water with her. 

They were both smiling and laughing as they splashed water on each other. 

"Come on, you guys!" Emori shouted. "It feels _so_ good!"

Jackson and Miller removed some clothes as well then walked into the water, holding hands. 

But Clarke could only stare at the cave, wondering what was inside. 

"If we didn't got stuck in that loop - or whatever that was -" she heard Echo say, "we would have found this place on our second day." 

Echo was right. They'd followed the stream for fourteen days without finding its source, but they found it only two days after they were attacked. 

They really were getting closer to the mountains this time. 

Seeing Murphy, Emori, Jackson and Miller so happy, swimming in the clear blue water, it made Clarke feel a little better. She couldn't recall the last time they had such a pleasant moment, and she wanted to be part of it as well. She started to shyly remove her pants, then Bellamy's sweater and her own, revealing her underwear - some plain black panties and a bra.

"Bellamy, " Echo said, "can we please talk before going in?"

Clarke was facing the water, ready to walk into it, but she turned her head to them. She caught Bellamy's darkening eyes on her for only a moment before he looked at Echo and nodded. They walked a little further away behind some trees, but she could hear them talk.

"I'm not blind, Bellamy! I know something's going on, but I'd rather hear it from you."

He didn't reply, and she heard Echo speak again.

"I know it's not just about what I did to her. I see the way you look at her since we woke up from cryo, and I know you were with her this morning. Tell me what's going on." 

"I just-" he paused, "fuck, I'm so sorry!" He sounded broken.

"What are you talking about?"

"I didn't mean to do it, it just happened."

"What happened?"

But she couldn't bear to hear more, so she ran into the pool. The sensation of fresh water on her skin, it was pure bliss. She dived in, and the water was so clear that she could see plants at the bottom. When she broke through the surface, she heard Murphy shouting at her. 

"Clarke! Come here!"

He was swimming still in the middle of the pool while talking and laughing with Emori, Jackson and Miller. She swimmed to them.

"Did you know that Miller had this crush on Bellamy?" he asked with a tease in his eyes.

Miller blushed a little. "Come on, man! What are you, twelve?" But he splashed water playfully at him, and they both started to talk about the crushes they had when on the Ark. 

"I had this weird crush on Thelonius for a while, " Jackson revealed out of nowhere.

Murphy looked shocked. "That's... wow, really?"

Clarke looked at them for a while, feeling... happy. Yeah, that was the right word. This pool of clear, blue water, this moment between them. Maybe, after all, this moon had something beautiful to offer.

"How about we go explore that cave over there?" Murphy suggested suddenly.

"Sounds fun, " Emori replied. 

Jackson and Miller exchanged a quick look. "Nathan and I will stay here. Be safe!" Then they both swimmed further away. 

"Clarke?" Murphy asked her.

"Yeah, sure!"

Murphy was smiling. "Let's go then." 

"Wait!" Emori exclaimed. "Shouldn't we bring something to defend ourselves if-"

She didn't have to finish her sentence for them to understand. What if there was something _alive_ in there? 

"I'll go get a gun. Wait for me," Clarke said.

She swimmed back to the tiny shore. She walked to her backpack and, then, she heard them. 

"-said nothing would change on the ground, " Echo was saying with her voice a little raised, "but that was a lie!"

She clearly wasn't supposed to hear that. She thought about getting back to Murphy and Emori, but she couldn't help herself. She had to listen. 

"I'm so sorry," Bellamy replied with hurt in his voice. "I couldn't know that-" he paused, "I love you, I really do. Isn't it enough?"

"It's not, not right now, not after you went to kiss her-"

"I didn't _went_ to kiss her, I just-"

"You just what?"

"I just don't know how to feel right now." 

"Then take some time to think about it." 

"What are you saying?"

"I'm not saying anything, just that you should take some time to think. We both should."

"You're breaking up with me?" 

"More like taking a break." 

"Echo-"

She heard one of them - probably Echo - walking further away in the forest. Clarke's heart was throbbing as she tried to make sense of what she just heard. But, after a moment, Bellamy was walking back to the shore. 

He froze when he saw her, and his eyes weren't burning her this time. They were only sad, and lost. 

He must know she heard them, right?

"Hey, " she said tentatively. "Murphy, Emori and I are going to explore the cave. Wanna come with us?"

He took a moment to think about it. "Yeah." 

"Bring a gun then." She grabbed one in her backpack, waiting for him to do so. 

Only, he didn't. He pulled off his shirt and pants instead and- fuck. That was so sexy. She swallowed, feeling her cheeks burning when she noticed his boxers weren't _really_ hiding anything. She suddenly recalled the sensation of him, hard against her. It was a little too much to bear, so she just walked back into the water without looking back, swimming toward the entrance of the cave where Murphy and Emori were waiting. Bellamy joined them a minute or so after she did, his eyes avoiding hers. 

The four of them swimmed into the cave, into this narrow corridor of stones. They were instantly hit by hot and humid air, and- There was this scent, this subtle scent. Clarke couldn't tell what it smelled like, only that it smelled so good she wanted more of it. 

They swimmed through the corridor. Soon the water became shallow, and they were standing on what felt like sand. They walked for a while, the corridor getting darker and the water shallower - until there wasn't any water left. 

Then, they noticed a bright purple light in the distance. 

Bellamy and Clarke clicked their gun safety off, both leading the way. The sand muffled the sound of their steps, and the sudden silence was almost frightening. It was so quiet that Clarke could hear her own breathing. 

As they were walking closer to the light, she noticed the smell was more... intense. 

It was now evident that the light was coming from a chamber at the near end of the corridor, and she exchanged a meaningful look with Bellamy. They both pointed their gun in front of them then walked into the light. 

Clarke blinked a few times, waiting for her eyes to adjust, and- 

She gasped, lowering her gun. 

The chamber was enormous, with high stone walls slicked with moss and fluorescent purple mushrooms. At its center, growing from the sand, were hundreds of - almost closed up - black flowers like she'd never seen before, not even in books. Each one of them was beautiful, intriguing, yet the sight of all of them was almost terrifying. 

As Clarke walked toward the center, she noticed the flowers were blooming. The scent was clearly coming from them. 

When she reached them, she couldn't resist taking one in her hand to smell it more closely. The scent reminded her of Bellamy's, and it smelled so good she never wanted to leave this cave. 

She stared at the flower for a long while with a grin on her face. Its petals looked like black velvet, and she wondered how it'd feel on her skin. She trailed a finger on one, giggling as it softness tickled her. She got on her knees, putting the gun on the ground near her. She had this sudden urge to crawl in those thousands of black velvet petals surrounding her so she could feel them on her bare skin. She was about to do so but started to laugh wildly at the image of herself rolling half naked on the floor, stopping only because she caught some movements out of the corner of her eye. 

She hardly found the strenght to look away from all the flowers. She gasped suddenly, noticing Murphy and Emori were making out. Murphy had her pinned against a stone wall, their bodies pressed against each other tightly. She could see Murphy's back muscles working, and Emori's bare legs wrapped around his waist, and the sight of them moving sensually with one another made blood rush to her face. 

She didn't know for how long she'd been staring at them with this lust in her eyes when-

"Clarke."

Bellamy's voice sounded deeper than ever, and it made sparks of heat spread through her whole body. He was standing far away from her, far away from the flowers, and he was so sexy with only his boxers on. Not that he wasn't sexy with his clothes on, but the sight of his bare chest made her head spin. 

She just loved him so much. 

And she wanted to tell him so badly. 

She wanted to whisper it in his ear until he'd put his mouth back on hers, until he'd bring back the wildfire. 

Yeah, she was gonna do that. 

She got up, and she just ran to him with the biggest grin on her face. She jumped in his arms, and he caught her without flinching. She suddenly had her fingers clutched at the hair on the back of his head, her face slightly higher than his, her almost bare hips touching his.

His eyes went dark with desire, and she wrapped her legs more tightly around his waist. 

"Clarke-" but he stopped talking, and she assumed he must have gotten distracted by her mouth suddenly trailing over his cheek and stopping at the corner of his mouth. God, she wanted that wildfire back, but-

"I need to tell you something, " she whispered with her lips only inches from his.

He swallowed hard, and she couldn't help herself. She just had to put her mouth on his Adam's apple, flicking the tip of her tongue on it before leaving a light kiss and, fuck, the groan he just made. 

"Clarke, dont- There's something wrong here. We should leave."

"There's nothing wrong here." She trailed her tongue to the pulse point pounding beneath his ear. "Everything feels just right." She started to suck at it playfully.

His calloused fingers digged deeper into the skin of her bare back. 

"Clarke-"

They were both panting a little and, when she looked back at him, he seemed captivated by her. His eyes were so dark, so mesmerizing, so perfect.

But he suddenly seemed pained, as if he was trying to resist something, and it made her fell a little insecure. What if he didn't want to kiss her again? What if he really did kiss her once only to leave her whole world empty of him? 

"Don't you want to kiss me again?" 

"Fuck, Clarke, that's all I wanna do."

She closed the distance between their faces again. Their mouths were slightly touching, but it wasn't enough. Her heart was throbbing so loudly.

"Then why don't you?"

"Not like this."

"Not like what?"

"Not when you're not _fine_."

"Bell, I've never felt more fine." 

He slightly shook his head, almost imperceptibly, but she was already sliding the tip of her tongue on his bottom lip. He parted his lips a little, and she could feel his panting breath on her mouth.

All of him was driving her crazy right now. 

A moment passed, and she suddenly had her feet on the sand again. She blinked, realising he had dropped her off and moved a little away from her. 

_He didn't kiss me because he's not in love with me_ , she thought. She felt a lump in her throat as loneliness washed intensely over her. Tears instantly filled her eyes, and they were soon running down her face.

"Clarke, " he whispered. 

He cupped her cheek with his hand, softly moving his thumb to wipe away some tears. But she only cried harder, and harder, because she was feeling so empty and lost. 

She was back in Shadow Valley for a moment, the radio slipping through her fingers and hitting the ground near her feet. 'I love you', she wanted to tell him - again -, but the words wouldn't get out of her mouth this time. 

He moved closer, pulling her swiftly into his arms. She breathed into the skin of his bare chest, the scent of him calming her. He put his mouth on her forehead, leaving a kiss, and she trailed her fingers behind his back.

"Having to accept your death was the hardest thing I had to do. It'd never had been better if you had died in Praimfaya like I thought you did, Clarke, do you hear me? Don't you ever say that again."

She frowned her eyes in confusion.

"I know you don't remember what you told me just after, you know-" She felt him getting tense, and it took her a moment to realise he was talking about Murphy and her sleeping together. "But what you said, I can't get it out of my head. I hate myself for making you feel like a burden." He paused for a moment. "You could never be a burden to me." 

He hugged her tighter. She just missed this so much, feeling his arms around her. It had always made her feel safe, at home, and-

The scent of the flowers suddenly disappeared, and they both recoiled from each other with a troubled look on their face.

 _What the hell?_ she asked herself.

Everything that happened since she had walked into the chamber felt like a dream she had no control over, but a dream she remembered entierely. She looked up at Bellamy, feeling ashamed.

"I'm so sorry," she said in a quiet voice. "I don't know why I-"

He had his eyes on the flowers. "This room... I think there's something wrong with the scent." 

She turned to the center of the room, noticing the flowers were now completely closed up. She recalled smelling one so closely... no wonder she had seemed more affected than Bellamy.

She was turning back to him when something caught her attention-

Her blood suddenly ran cold. A man with dark clothes was standing still at the entrance of another chamber she hadn't noticed before.

Bellamy instantly knew something was wrong. He followed the direction of her eyes, and-

"Shit," he said, realising his gun was lying further away on the ground. 

Clarke could only stare at him as he ran quickly, grabbed the gun and shot, but the man had disappeared into the chamber.

Bellamy glanced at her with determination in his eyes, and time slowed down as she realised what he was about to do.

"Don't go-" she screamed at him but he was already running after the man.

She only took a split second to decide what to do.

She wasn't going to watch Bellamy ran away from her this time. 

She was gonna run too.


	14. This force to be reckoned with

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must warn you that this chapter gets pretty dark near the end. It contains stuff about suicide that may be triggering to some.

Clarke was about to start running when a thought crossed her mind. _My gun_ , she realised, _I have to go grab it first. I can't go in defenseless._ But her eyes were glued on Bellamy, who had almost reached the entrance, and her heart was thumping so loudly she could hear it. _Just go after him! The gun is too far away behind you, you don't have time!_

She blinked rapidly as she hesitated for only a moment. 

"Clarke!" It was Murphy.

She turned her heard behind to see Emori and him running toward her from the other side of the chamber with a worried look on their face. _They must have heard the shot_ , she thought. 

"Grab the gun!" she shouted at them, then she started to run after Bellamy.

Bellamy had always been faster than her. So she ran, the faster she could, but she helplessly watched him disappear into the purple light of the second chamber way before she got there. The moment she ran in, she stopped in her track to catch her breath while glancing around her at the circular room with corridors leading off in multiple directions.

 _Bellamy's not here_ , she realised with panic.

She looked at the ground, searching for footprints in the sand, but-

 _That's not possible_ , she thought. 

There was no footprints at all. The sand was immaculate as if no one'd ever walked in here. 

She took a step forward, wondering what was at the end of each corridor but the light coming from them was too bright for her to see. So she stood there, alone, cursing at herself for losing sight of Bellamy. She souldn't have hesitated, she should have just went after him.

"Clarke?" Murphy's voice startled her as she turned around. He and Emori were catching their breath, and he had the gun in his hand. "What the hell happened? Where's Bellamy?"

But the words were frozen in her mouth. 

"What was up with those flowers back there?" Emori asked while glancing hesitantly at Murphy. "I felt high or something."

"I did too," he replied, "but, I gotta admit, it wasn't bad at all." His mouth curved into a smirk, and Emori blushed. 

Clarke rolled her eyes, irritated at these two flirting in such an inappropriate moment. "I couldn't care less about the flowers right now. Give me the gun, Murphy, I'm going to find Bellamy."

He frowned his eyes. "Why don't you just tell us what's going on, huh?" 

"We saw-" She paused, unsure of how to formulate what happened. "We saw one of _them_. Bellamy tried to shoot him, then he went after him, but," she pointed at the sand everywhere, "there's not one single footprint! It's like he- he disappeared!" Her heart was racing rapidly, her breath getting faster, as the walls seemed to be closing in around her. "I- I hesitated, and I can't-" She was trembling now, and she was having a hard time breathing. "What if something happened to him? It's my fault!" Murphy walked to her, but she took a few steps back. "Dont- Just give me the gun."

"Clarke-"

"Just give me the fucking gun and leave!"

_You said you would have saved every one of us because-_

_Yeah, but that was bullshit and you know it. I'm not that selfless, the transport ship was our only way out of that shithole._

"You don't even care about him!" she almost screamed.

"The fuck, Clarke? What is wrong with you?" 

"You would have let him die anyway to save to save your own ass! Isn't it what you said last night?" Her eyes were glaring at him right now, and he seemed taken aback. "That talk about wanting to be a better version of yourself, that was bullshit too, wasn't it?" She shook her head in disbelief. "Give me the gun and get out." She held out her hand to him, waiting for the gun. 

Murphy's eyes were wide and shocked as he opened and closed his mouth a few times, at loss for words for what may be the first time in his life. 

"Fine," she said bitterly. "I'll do without the gun."

She sighed angrily and turned her eyes away from him, looking around her as she tried to decide which corridor she should take.

"I'll go find Bellamy," Murphy said quietly, but firmly, after a long moment. "Emori and you should go back, warn the others and leave to the mountains. It's not safe here." 

Clarke's eyes landed immediatly on him. He had this spark in his eyes she'd never seen in him before, this determination.

"Are you out of your mind, John?" Emori exclaimed. "I'm not leaving you here alone!" 

"And there's no way I'm leaving without Bellamy," Clarke said. 

The three of them looked at each other for a little while, then Emori walked to Murphy and took his hand. "You should be the one to warn the others, John," she told him softly.

He shook his head vehemently as he glanced at the both of them. "I'm not leaving you-" 

"Yes, you are! You run and swim faster than us! Clarke and I can handle ourselves. You'll get to the others in no time, and you'll all come back with more guns to help find Bellamy. We _all_ leave to the mountains, or we don't." She paused. "Clarke and I will wait right right here in case Bellamy comes back."

Murphy hesitated, then he reluctantly gave the gun to Emori. "I'll be back soon. I promise."

Emori grabbed his arm before he left. "Bring back some clothes too. I'm not about to risk my life half naked." 

He had this fleeting smile just before he left, running. Once he'd disappeared, Emori turned to Clarke, handing her the gun. 

"You're a better shot than I am. Take it."

Clarke reached for the gun, making sure the safety was off. "Why stay here with me?" 

"I would only have slowed him down."

Clarke observed her for a moment, perplexed. "Six years is a long time." 

Emori raised an eyebrow in confusion, waiting for Clarke to continue. 

"Before Praimfaya, Murphy and you would have left Bellamy and me here and went to the mountains without even looking back."

"We would have, but-", she paused, her eyes suddenly glittering with so many emotions, "interacting wih only the same people for six years it makes you see and feel things differently."

"Yeah, I get that. Trust me."

"I care about Bellamy, and John cares about him too." Emori sighed deeply as she shook her head in exasperation. "He cares about all his friends, you know, he's just really bad at showing it."

Clarke nodded slowly, knowing, deep down, Emori was right in a way. However hard Murphy was trying to hide it, he just cared a lot. That night in the lounge when they'd both talked for hours, he'd told her that he went back with Bellamy to save Monty before Praimfaya hit. He didn't hesitate to risk his own life to save his friend, and it made her wonder if he'd been honest with her last night.

"I don't know why I lashed out at him," she said. 

"Well, I can't say he didn't deserve it." Emori stared at her with a sudden apprehension. "You like him." That wasn't a question.

"Murphy? Yeah, I do, he's my friend."

"Is that all he is, a _friend_?"

Clarke felt her heart skip a beat as the question took her by surprise. "It's not what you think. We only slept together because we were drunk and-"

"I know why John slept with you. He did what he always does when he's hurt. He hurts people back and he self-sabotages himself. I knew that when he came to ask me not to tell the others about what you both did. I just didn't expect for the two of you to get so close."

"I'm sorry, I didn't-"

"I'm not asking you to be sorry, Clarke, I'm asking you to be honest."

Clarke's eyes widened. "I-"

Could there be something more than friendship between Murphy and her? That night in the lounge, the both of them kissing, and fucking, that hadn't been about them. That'd been about her losing Bellamy, and about Murphy losing Emori. That'd been about the both of them trying to find comfort in each other. 

Then they became friends, they needed to be friends, because they were feeling both so lonely, and she'd never really thought there could be something more than friendship between them until Murphy'd brought it up last night. _You don't get it, don't you? I think I felt something when you asked me to stay with you the night before the landing._ But she knew, she just knew, that what he'd felt wasn't love. 

Maybe asking him to stay with her that night had made their relationship a little ambiguous, but there could never be more than friendship. 

How she was feeling about Murphy, it had nothing to do with how she was feeling about Bellamy. And she knew that how Murphy might feel about her, it had nothing to do with how he was feeling about Emori. 

But Murphy already realised that, didn't he? This morning, when he'd told to her he didn't want to lose their friendship... _I know I felt something that night, and it may not be love but it wasn't only loneliness. I don't know what that was, and maybe it'd just fucked me up to sleep with someone else than Emori. I just- I don't think I have to know because I'm fine with this fucked up friendship we have._ Had this been his way of telling her that he was aware of the ambiguity of their relationship, but that he didn't want more than a friendship anyway?

"I think we're just both feeling lost right now," Clarke finally replied, "but he loves _you_." She paused, smiling at her in a meaningful way. "He's just really bad at showing it."

Emori laughed a little, sounding relieved. "Yeah, he sure is." 

"Why did you end things with him before the landing? I thought you guys tried to work it out when you came back from space."

Emori snorted in exasperation. "If having sex instead of talking is working it out then, yeah, we did." She paused, her eyes frowned, probably wondering if she could be completely honest. "It's just- I love him, and I think I always will. I just can't be happy with him, not when he refuses to sort out what's wrong within himself. I can't be with someone who only fights for me when he's surviving. I want to be with someone who also fights for me when he's living." She paused for only a moment before speaking again. "He can be so frustrating sometimes! I tried to help him, but he wouldn't let me in completely. He gets close to you, opens up, then pushes you away." 

Clarke nodded, not surprised by Emori's answer. Her words were only confirming what she already thought and what she already shared with Murphy last night.

Emori narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "But you already knew all of that, Clarke, didn't you?"

"I did."

"Then why ask? To make sure you were right?"

"Kind of, but that's not..." Clarke trailed off as she searched for a way to express her thoughts. "You should let him another chance."

"For what exactly? I deserve better than his constant self-loathing."

Clarke shook her head. "I think he's ready for something better this time."

"Did he tell you that?"

"He- shit." God, she wanted so badly to tell Emori what Murphy told her this morning, but she couldn't betray his trust. "I'm not blind, that's all. I've seen how badly he dealt with you leaving him."

"Yeah, he loved me so much that he slept with someone else." Emori had this anger in her eyes. "Talk about an epic love story," she added sarcastically.

Clarke's eyes widened with hurt. "I can't say he didn't screw up, but I can say that this is exactly why he slept with someone else." She paused, her throat suddenly tight with emotion. "Because he just loved you so much."

She wasn't only talking about Murphy, and Emori realised that. "Is that why you slept with him?" 

Clarke's mind was racing as she tried to think of a way out of that question, but the words were frozen in her mouth. 

"It was about Bellamy, wasn't it?"

She felt her cheeks burning instantly. Were her feelings for Bellamy that obvious? She looked away from Emori, embarrassed, and started pacing nervously around the room with her arms crossed and her left hand clutched at the gun. 

"It's just that I'm not blind either, Clarke. I see the way you look at him."

She stopped in her track, feeling like her body had forgotten how to breathe. "I didn't mean to-"

"I get it, you know, I really do. I mean, I always saw _something_ between the two of you before Praimfaya, and I wished you didn't have to sacrifice yourself for us to go to space, but-" she sighed as she blinked a few times, looking as if she was about to drop some harsh truth, "he's been with Echo for more than three years. He loves her, and she loves him, and I just don't want for you or anyone to get hurt." Her eyes were nothing but sincere. "I'm so sorry to-"

"It's fine," Clarke cut her.

But it wasn't fine.

She couldn't stop herself from recalling the words Bellamy'd said to Echo a moment before they went to explore the cave. _I love you, I really do. Isn't it enough?_ She felt tears sting in her eyes as she realised he'd probably never loved her as much as he was loving Echo. Maybe he kissed her because he still had feelings for the Clarke he left behind, but that didn't change anything.

Emori didn't reply, and the both of them kept silent for what felt like hours until Murphy, Jackson, Miller and Echo came back. They all had clothes on, and they were soaking wet.

"Here." Murphy took his backpack off his shoulders, pulling clothes out of it and throwing them at Emori and her. 

Clarke grabbed the wet clothes in her fingers and put them on immediatly.

"Bellamy?" Echo asked her with more emotion in her voice than usual.

Clarke could only shake her head, trying to hide how worried she was. 

"Where do we go now?" Jackson asked. "There are too many corridors!"

"Not too many," Murphy replied with an implied tone. "There are six of them."

Emori frowned her eyes, perplexed. "Are you suggesting we split?"

"That's exactly what I'm suggesting."

"That's not a good idea, man," Miller said. "We should stay together. We don't know what-"

"What we do know," Murphy cut him firmly, "is that Bellamy disappeared. We don't know if he's alright, and we need to find him before-" he stopped, unable to speak the words he was thinking. "We need to split."

"There could be more than one of them out there!" Miller exclaimed. "We can't risk going alone! What if all of this is a-"

But Miller didn't finish his thought as they suddenly heard someone screaming in pain in the distance. Clarke's blood ran cold. It was Bellamy's voice. 

She was about to start running when Emori grabbed her arm. "We don't know where it came from!" 

"I don't care! I won't wait for him to get killed!"

Clarke started to run into the nearest corridor, the bright purple light blinding her. She could only think about Bellamy, about the way he'd just screamed in pain, and the possibility of him dying was terrifying her. She suddenly stumbled on something, then fell on her knees and palms. She clutched at her gun, turning apprehensively her head to the ground behind her, and she could swear her heart had stopped beating.

"Bellamy!" Her voice was trembling. 

He was lying unconscious on his stomach, the side of his face pressed to the sand. He was only a few feets away from her, but it seemed to take her an eternity to reach him. She turned him on his back, noticing he had blood and cuts all over over his body. She instantly checked for a pulse, her trembling fingers on his neck.

 _Come on_ , she thought.

Then she felt it, and she sighed of pure relief. He was alive, and that was all that mattered. She softly put her hand on his face. "Please wake up." But he didn't, and she couldn't tell for how long she'd been staring at him when his eyes finally fluttered opened. 

She felt a tear escape her eye. "Bell?" 

"Clarke?" He sounded lost, and pained. 

She helped him sit against the stone wall, standing on her knees closely beside him. "You're such an idiot," she said. "What were you thinking?"

"I couldn't-", he paused, "We needed informations, and he was alone and unarmed. I thought I could get him." He coughed a little of blood. "Shit." 

Clarke put her hand back on his cheek, trailing her thumb on his bottom lip to remove the fresh blood. Her hand was shaking completely as she did, and she tried hard not to look him in the eye. She had his blood on her thumb now, and she thought of wiping it off on her clothes but she just couldn't move her hand away from his face. 

"Clarke."

She kept her eyes on his lips.

"Look at me."

He put the palm of his hand on top of hers, holding it against his face, and she shivered at how soft it felt. Her eyes slowly went up his face until they met his, captivated and troubled by the emotion they found in them. 

"About what happened back there..." he trailed off. 

She realised with panic that he was talking about her jumping into his arms, and it made her blush really hard. _Don't you want to kiss me again?_ , she'd whispered to him, making a fool of herself. "It's fine, we don't have to talk about it," she replied a little too dryly. "We weren't ourselves, that meant nothing." 

But it didn't mean nothing to her.

He stared at her with his hands on hers for such a long time that she thought she might combust. "Yeah," he finally said, letting go of her hand. "We should get out of here." 

"Not until you tell me what happened to you. Where's the man you followed?"

"I- I don't know." His eyes were staring absently in front of him as he tried to recall what happened to him. "I ran into the room, then I don't remember anything but-" he lightly shook his head in confusion, "but this voice speaking to me."

"What did it say?"

"It doesn't make sense, Clarke."

"Tell me anyway."

"It just doesn't feel real. I just must have hit my head pretty hard." 

She tilted her head, raising an eyebrow, as she waited for him to spit it out. 

He sighed in exasperation. "You're stubborn, aren't you?" But he was smiling a little.

"I can be."

"Fine. It said 'When the time comes, you'll know where to find me.' "

"That's... creepy."

"Tell me about it."

"As you said, you must have hit your head pretty hard, that's all." She took a closer look at the cuts on his body, noticing with relief they were only superficial. "We'll need to clean these wounds, but you'll be fine."

He nodded, and she suddenly heard a shot being fired from the end of the corridor almost as the same time she felt sand splashing on her. She didn't hesitate to aim her gun in the direction of the shot, but the bright light made it impossible for her to see more than several feet away. She fired three times anyway, hoping it could buy them some time. 

"Come on," she said with urgency in her voice as she helped him get up. 

He leaned his arm on her shoulders for support, and they started to walk as quickly as possible to where she'd runned from, to the others. 

"The man must have attacked me and stole my gun," Bellamy said after a while.

They finally reached what was supposed to be the room at the center of all the corridors, but-

"How's that possible?" Clarke asked, troubled. 

They were in a closed, smaller and darker room with an old blanket and a pillow scattered in the middle of it, on the sand. They walked away from the entrance of the room, and Clarke went to grab the blanket. She glanced at the corridor to make sure they weren't being followed then she turned to Bellamy, noticing he had his eyes glued on hers. 

She walked back to him. "Here," she said almost quietly as she put the blanket on his shoulders. Neither of them dared to talk for a moment as their faces were a little too close to each other. She was trying really, really, really hard to keep her attention focused on the entrance of the room and not on the burning sensation lingering on her lips. The sensation of them kissing in the suns rise, the sensation of his lips meeting hers for the first time, the sensation of falling more in love with him - if that was even possible. 

Bellamy swallowed. "Did the kiss we had this morning meant nothing, too?" His deep voice was only a whisper.

 _It meant everything_ , she wanted to tell him so badly but couldn't. 

Yeah, maybe Murphy was right and she was just afraid of telling Bellamy the truth. Maybe she was afraid of him not loving her back, of him pushing her away. 

Maybe she couldn't risk not having him as a friend. 

And, besides, she didn't want to hurt his relationship with Echo more than she already did. 

"With everything that happened on this moon," she finally whispered back, "we're just exhausted and it- it made us do things we shouldn't have. That kiss, it was a mistake." 

She felt her heart shatter as she said those words, and she had no choice but to look away from him as she couldn't bear his stare any longer.

"God, I loved you so much, Bellamy. I told you I was in love with you before Praimafaya, and I know you loved me too, but that's not who we are and how we feel anymore. We're just feeling lost because we didn't get to see each other for six years and, when we did, it was a whole lot to deal at once." She paused for only an instant. "You're with Echo now." He didn't reply, so she continued. "Do you think we can be friends, for real this time?"

"Clarke, I-"

But she'd just noticed all these weird symbols engraved on the stone walls around them. "I've never seen such symbols before," she cut him. She walked to the nearest wall, trailing her fingers on the engravings. 

She was about to say something else, when Murphy's voice startled her. 

"I'm going back!"

She turned around, but he wasn't there. 

"I think it came from the end of the corridor," Bellamy said. 

She nodded, walking back to him. He leaned his arm around her shoulders again, envelopping her with the blanket as he did so. They went back to the corridor, walking as fast as they could.

"John, you can't! You won't come back!"

"Bellamy's still inside, we need to go back," Echo said.

"We can't," Jackson replied. "We'll only get lost again." He paused. "We've been searching for them for the past two days and we just finally found a way out. We need to go to the mountains!" 

_For the past two days?_ Clarke thought, confused. That couldn't be. She'd only been gone for a few hours.

"I'm not leaving them alone in that cave!" Murphy exclaimed. 

"I don't want to leave them either, but we need to face the truth! We have no way to know if we'll find a way out once we go back there, and we don't have any food left! We need to go to the mountains before we starve ourselves."

"I don't care about starving myself!" Murphy screamed at Jackson.

"Well, you should." 

"What the fuck is your-" But Murphy completely ignored Jackson when he realised Clarke and Bellamy were walking out of the corridor. 

Before Clarke could take a look at where she now was, Murphy'd already closed the distance between them.

"Clarke!" He took her tightly in his arms with so much relief it almost overwhelmed her. 

She hugged him back, a little taken aback, and Bellamy removed his arm from her shoulders while staring at the both of them with his eyes frowned. 

"I was so fucking worried," he whispered in her ear. Then he moved away from her, turning to Bellamy. "I thought we'd lost the both of you," he said as he suddenly hugged him without minding all the blood on his friend.

"Well, we're here now", Bellamy replied, seeming a little troubled by Murphy's intense reaction.

Echo made a noise with her throat, and Murphy let go of him then walked back to Emori.

"What happened to you?" Echo asked Bellamy with worried in her voice. "All that blood..." She put her hand on his face, then she hesitantly pressed herself against him. "I missed you so much. I thought you were-" 

"I'm fine," he cut her. 

Bellamy had his arms around her, but he seemed hesitant and conflicted. He glanced at Clarke, but she turned her eyes away from him - from them - and looked around her. They were all standing outside the cave, in a desert, and it was now night. The big planet in the dark sky was casting its mellow greenish light on the sand at their feet, and-

"The mountains", she whispered with surprise. 

She could see them in the distance, so close that it seemed surreal. They could probably get to them in one night and one day of walk, but it didn't make any sense. How could they be this close to the mountains, right now, when they were so far away from them this morning?

"We went after you, Clarke," Emori said, "but we never found you. It's like you had disappeared. We walked in never-ending corridors without ever finding our way out until a few minutes ago. What the hell happened to you guys?"

"I found Bellamy immediatly," Clarke said with her eyes still on the mountains, "then we walked to a room with weird symbols on the walls. But we were only gone for a few hours, not two days." She looked back at them. "We heard Murphy's voice then all of yours, and we followed them here."

"What about all that blood?" Emori asked while staring at Bellamy. "Did that man attacked you, or what?"

"I don't remember." 

No one talked for a while as they tried to understand what was going on, but there was just no logical explanation - as there was no logical explanation for everything that had happened since they landed. 

Jackson grabbed his backpack at his feet. "We need to get away from here. If we walk straight to the mountains, without taking a break, we could be there before we get too much dehydrated."

"Wait," Clarke said, "where's _my_ backpack?" The sketchbook Bellamy gave her was in that backpack.

"We had no choice but to leave it on the shore," Murphy replied. "We could only bring our own." She must have this sadden look on her face because her throat was feeling so tight right now. "I'm sorry, Clarke. I didn't think we couldn't get back-" She just nodded as the words were frozen on her mouth. It must have clicked in Murphy's head because he walked to her and softly put his hand on her shoulder. "We'll come back."

Bellamy suddenly made what sounded like a frustrated noise then asked if someone had thought of bringing him clothes. Echo pulled a shirt and pants out of her backpack and gave them to him. He dropped the blanket at his feet as he tried to put the clothes on, but he was having a hard time doing so. 

"You need to rest," Echo said while helping him. 

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You're covered in blood and cuts, and you can't even put your own clothes on. You won't walk far without needing to take a break."

"Maybe. But for now, we need to get as far away as possible from this cave."

They both exchanged an irritated look, then Echo started to lead the way to the mountains.

As Clarke walked, all she could see apart from the sand surrounding them were the mountains in front of them and the exit of the cave behind them. As they were getting further away from it, she noticed it looked like a huge rock in the middle of nowhere. There was no sign of the forest they'd been stuck in for the past two weeks. 

Murphy was walking in front of her, holding hands with Emori, and he was glancing back at her from time to time. He looked as if he wanted to tell her something, but didn't know what or how. So he'd just smile, and she'd smile back. 

Clarke walked silently for hours, trying to not to focus on the fact that she was yet again walking in a desert with no food or water. Then, the two suns started to appear in the horizon. The suns rays hit her strongly, feeling more hot on her skin than they ever did. 

"The two suns," Echo said, "they're closer to each other." 

Clarke looked at them in the distance, realising she was right. 

They continued to walk as the suns got higher and closer in the sky. Clarke's mouth was dry, and she was feeling a little weak. She couldn't stop her mind from going back to that moment when she'd put a gun on her temple. Her knees suddenly buckled underneath her and she fell on them on the sand, her whole body trembling. 

"Clarke!" she heard Bellamy shout behind her, and she felt his presence beside her almost instantly. His eyes were worried as he looked at her. "You look sick!" He felt so much like the old Bellamy right now, worried about her when he was the one with all the blood and the cuts on his body. He put the palm of his hand on her forehead. "You're burning up!"

Clarke caught the sight of Murphy, Emori, Echo, Jackson and Miller as they stopped walking, turning to them. 

"I'm just overheated," she replied. "I'm fine."

"You'll never be fine, Clarke. Maybe you should put the gun on your head and shoot," Bellamy said.

Her eyes widened with shock. "What?" 

"I said, maybe you should rest for a while."

"I- I'm fine." She gathered all the strengh she had to get up. "See? I'm fine. Let's go."

She made a few steps, but Murphy quickly exchanged a look with Bellamy and walked to her. "Bellamy's right, Clarke," he said gently. "You really don't look fine. You should rest."

"We need to get to those mountains, or we'll die in this desert." She gave him a meaningful look as he knew what she went through after Praimfaya. "I'm not dying in here."

"Maybe you should have pulled that trigger when you had the chance," he replied while softly putting his hand on her shoulder as if to calm her.

She recoiled from him. "What did you just say?"

"I said maybe we should all rest for a little while if we want to make it alive to the mountains."

She blinked a few times.

"Clarke? Are you alright?" 

Murphy sounded worried, but when she blinked again it wasn't Murphy who was standing in front of her. It was that man who'd thrown the explosive on the transport ship. 

"Get away from me!" she screamed. She took a few steps back, aiming her gun at him while clicking the safety off. "Or I'll shoot you!" Her mind was working fast right now, but she couldn't make sense of what she was seeing. That man was dead, wasn't he? How could he be there right now? "You died! How are you not dead right now?"

"Clarke-" 

Why was this man saying her name as if he knew her well? She glanced at Bellamy, who was still standing near him as if it was a normal thing to do. 

"What are you waiting for?" she screamed at Bellamy. "Take him down while I have my gun pointed at him!" Her left hand was shaking so much she feared it might let go of the gun, and the suns were so hot on her skin it was almost unbearable. 

Bellamy was looking at her with this weird expression in his eyes as if it was _she_ was the one who'd thrown the explosive. "Clarke, why don't you lower your gun, huh?" 

"Why would I do that?" Bellamy frowned his eyes in confusion. "Why the hell would you tell me to lower my gun when that man fucking blew up the transport ship and killed Shaw!" 

He glanced at the man then at her. "Clarke, lower your gun." But she shook her head as she couldn't understand why he would protect that man. "Trust me, please."

She felt like she was going crazy. She did trust Bellamy, but he wasn't making sense right now. What was she supposed to do? Before she could decide, the man made a step forward. 

"Clarke, it's me. Murphy."

She shook her head. "What are you talking about?" He made another step forward. "Don't get any closer to me!" But he took another step and she shot two times at him. 

Only, her hand was shaking so hard that the bullets didn't touch him. They just disappeared in the distance, somewhere in the desert. 

"I'm sorry," the man said briskly with an expression of horror plastered in his face, "I'll just walk away from you now." And he did.

"Fuck," she said as tears of fear rolled down her face. That man was standing not that far from her, but she couldn't even shoot him. How fucking useless was she? She looked at Bellamy. "What's going on?" Her voice sounded so desperate it made her curse at herself. God, she was so weak.

"Clarke, please lower your gun and I promise I'll explain everything to you." 

She nodded, and she reluctantly lowered her gun but kept her eyes on the man. 

"Good, now I'll walk to you so you can give me your gun, ok?" 

She nodded again, and Bellamy walked to her and waited for her to give him the gun. She handed it to him with a shaking hand, and he put the safety back on when he took it. Their hands touched, and she noticed he was getting closer to her until he could hug her. His arms went around her hesitantly at first, but then we was hugging her more tightly. She could feel his nose in her hair, slightly touching her neck. She closed her eyes.

"Bellamy," she whispered, "I don't understand. I'm- I'm so scared."

"Do you trust me?" he asked quietly.

"I do." She trusted him more than anyone. "Please, tell me what's going on."

"What's going on is that you're such a burden to me, to everyone." He paused. "You should have died in Praimfaya and the world would've only been better. I would have only been better. You're so useless and weak, it's disgusting." 

"That's not what you said to me in that cave. You said-" 

"I lied to make you feel better, but I'm tired to make you feel better." 

She'd never thought words could hurt her this much. She moved away from him as she opened her eyes, and she felt dread building in her stomach. Bellamy was now wearing the same dark clothes as the people who attacked them. Was he with them now? She quickly grabbed her gun back from his hand, making a step back and aiming at him.

"I trusted you," she told him. "How could you do that to me?"

"Clarke-"

"Don't! I don't want to hear it! I just want it to stop!" 

She was so tired of fighting.

She'd thought this moon had something beautiful to offer. 

She'd thought she could start over, but she'd never been so wrong. The death, the destruction, the fight, it will never end. It will never end because she'd always bring all of that with her wherever she'd go. Finn, Tondc, Mount Weather, Shadow Valley. She was the problem, wasn't she? Maybe she should have pulled that trigger in the desert that day. 

She didn't realise she'd clicked the safety off then put the gun to her temple.

"Clarke, what are you doing?" Bellamy screamed with so much despair in his voice. 

How could he be desperate when he'd just betrayed her? When he'd just told her she was a burden? Wasn't he supposed to feel relieved that she was about to end it once and for all?

It didn't matter anyway because she knew she was a burden. She was a burden to Madi when she'd electrocuted her, to Raven when she'd betrayed her and got her tortured. She even was a burden to her own mother who couldn't wait to get back into cryo, to get away from her.

Bellamy took a step forward, but she took two steps back.

"What I should've done a long time ago," she replied. 

She sighed deeply, closing her eyes, but before she could pull the trigger someone violently grabbed her arm from behind and disarmed her.

"I'm sorry, Clarke," she heard Echo say before she felt something hitting her face and everything went dark.

 

...

 

Bellamy was walking further away behind Clarke when he saw her fall on her knees. 

"Clarke," he heard himself shout as he didn't hesitate to run to her even if his whole body was hurting as hell. He got on his knees beside her, realising she was trembling. His eyes landed on her face, and he instantly felt worried. Her skin was pale and sweaty, her lips were cracked and dry, and her pupils were so dilated that he couldn't see the pale blue of her eyes. "You look sick!" He put his right palm on her forehead, and he only felt more worried. "You're burning up!"

"I'm just overheated," she replied. "I'm fine." 

But she didn't sound fine at all. "You should rest for a while," he suggested.

Her eyes widened as if she'd just seen a ghost. "What?"

"I said, maybe you should rest for a while." 

But he should've know she wouldn't make it easy. 

"I'm fine," she said as she seemed to gather all the strength she had to get up. "See? I'm fine. Let's go."

Bellamy caught the sight of Murphy out of the corner of his eye. As he turned his eyes to him, he realised Murphy had a better chance to convince Clarke to rest as he was now her closest friend (or whatever he was to her but he'd prefer not to think about that possibility). So, he gave a meaningful look at Murphy who seemed to understand as he nodded slightly.

Murphy walked to Clarke. "Bellamy's right, Clarke. You really don't look fine. You should rest."

"We need to get to those mountains, or we'll die in this desert," she replied with such determination. Bellamy noticed the both of them exchanged a look as if there was something more to understand from her words. "I'm not dying in here," she continued.

"Maybe we should all rest for a little while if we want to make it alive to the mountains," Murphy suggested as he put his hand on her shoulder. 

Bellamy clenched his jaw a little. Why did Murphy have to be so soft with her? 

But Clarke jerked away from him. 

"What did you just say?" she asked, sounding a little paranoid.

"I said maybe we should all rest for a little while if we want to make it alive to the mountains."

Clarke was blinking rapidly, and Bellamy instantly knew she wasn't just overheated. There was something going on, but he couldn't tell what. 

"Clarke? Are you alright?" Murphy asked, worried. 

Then, she had this fear in her eyes before she started to scream. "Get away from me!" She walked away from Murphy, aiming her gun at him while clicking the safty off. "Or, I'll shoot you!" 

Bellamy's mind was working fast right now, but he couldn't make sense of what he was seeing. Why was she suddenly so afraid of Murphy she had to point her gun at him?

"You died," she screamed. "How are you not dead right now?"

"Clarke-" Murphy said with a lot of confusion in his voice. 

But Clarke turned her eyes away from Murphy to look at him. "What are you waiting for? Take him down while I have my gun pointed at him!" 

Bellamy swallowed as he tried to think of what to do, but he could only stare at her. Her left hand was shaking hard, and she seemed to be having a hard time dealing with the light of the two suns hitting in her eyes. She looked so vulnerable it pained him. All he wanted to do was to walk right to her and take her in his arms to make her feel safer - as he did in the cave.

"Clarke, why don't you lower you gun, huh?" he said tentatively. 

"Why would I do that?" She had this confused look in her eyes. "Why the hell would you tell me to lower my gun when that man fucking blew up the transport ship and killed Shaw?"

What was she talking about? He glanced at Murphy then her. "Clarke, lower you gun." But she only shook her head, seeming even more confused at the situation. "Trust me, please." 

She had this crazy look in her eyes that made Bellamy shiver with dread. He thought maybe he could softly talk her down, but Murphy had to make that stupid move. 

"Clarke, it's me. Murphy," he said as he walked to her.

"What are you talking about?" she replied. "Don't get any closer to me!" 

Bellamy wanted to tell Murphy to get the hell back to where he was standing a minute ago, but Murphy must have been feeling really confident because he made another step forward. So Clarke shot at him twice but, thank God, her hand was shaking so much she missed him both times. 

Bellamy wouldn't be surprised if Murphy had pissed his pants a little because, yeah, he almost died right there. 

"I'm sorry," Murphy said with this look of horror in his face, "I'll just walk away from you now." He did, almost sheepishly, with both his hands up near his face.

"Fuck," Bellamy heard Clarke say. He turned to her. She had tears falling down her face, and she seemed terrified. She suddenly looked at him. "What's going on?" 

She sounded so desperate, so lost, but she was trusting _him_ to help her.

"Clarke, please lower your gun and I promise I'll explain everything to you." He tried to remain calm, but his heart was racing up like crazy.

She nodded, and she lowered her gun.

In this moment, he know what he had to do.

"Good, now I'll walk to you so you can give me your gun, ok?"

She nodded again, and he walked to her. When he took the gun and their hands touched, he slowly got himself closer to her so he could hug her. He was hesitant, at first, because it was the first time he took her in his arms since waking up from cryo.

Sure, he did hug her in that cave but he wasn't really himself, right?

When he felt her warmth on him, he couldn't stop himself from hugging her more tightly. He wanted to make her feel safer, but the truth was that it was making _him_ feel safer. Fuck, he'd missed this. Hugging her. Well, not only hugging her but all of her. 

He didn't realise he'd close his eyes and smelled her hair.

"Bellamy." The way she'd whispered his name, it made his heart ache. "I don't understand. I'm- I'm so scared." 

"Do you trust me?" he asked quietly for only her to hear.

"I do. Please tell me what's going on."

He was struggling to think of something to say but, then, he realised that he shouldn't _think_ of what he wanted to say. 

"I missed you so fucking much, Clarke. I think I'm having a hard time letting you in since I came back from space because I'm terrified of losing you again." He paused as he could swear he felt her heart thumping loudly against his. "I would never hurt you, Clarke, you know that? Never. So, I just need you to trust me right now when I say that this man you see, he isn't real. I don't know what's happening to you, but I'll figure-"

She suddenly got tense in his arms. "That's not what you said to me in that cave. You said-"

"Clarke, please listen to me. What you hear and what you see, it isn't real."

But she moved away from him, grabbing the gun from his hand before he could even blink. She aimed at him as she walked away with more hurt in her eyes than he'd even seen. 

"I trusted you," she told him with a broken voice. "How could you do that to me?"

"Clarke-" He wasn't even afraid that she'd shoot him, he was just afraid that she'd hurt herself.

"Don't! I don't want to hear it! I just want it to stop!" She sounded desperate and tired.

Bellamy realised that Echo had slowly and silently walked around Clarke to get behind her. She was now nearly close enough to disarm her. But his attention went back to Clarke when he heard her click the safety off, and his blood ran cold when he saw her put the gun to her temple. 

Bellamy had always perceived Clarke as this force to be reckoned with, as this beautiful, and fierce and courageous human being. To him, there was just no other like her. 

He'd never tell her that, obviously, but he instantly fell for her when he'd seen her working her way down that ladder in the dropship. She just had this wit and stubborness that had turned him on so badly. Yeah, he'd tried to brush it off for a while, but the truth was that he was a goner the moment she challenged him not to open the door.

God, he'd never met someone as unstoppable as Clarke Griffin. 

He'd even came to think she could never die until she did.

Only, it turned out she actually didn't. 

How was she not the most resilient person that could ever exist?

So when he looked at her, holding the gun to her own temple, something broke inside him. 

"Clarke, what are you doing?" he heard himself screaming with only despair in his voice. 

"What I should've done a long time ago," she replied with determination. 

He knew she was going to pull that trigger, and he could only watch her do so, helpless, as he was standing too far away to stop her in time. He was going to loser her again, wasn't he? But, this time, she'd be gone for real. 

Fuck, he didn't save her from getting her throat slit only to watch her die two days later.

But the moment Clarke sighed and closed her eyes, Echo grabbed her arm from behind and disarmed her. "I'm sorry, Clarke," she said as she punched her hard in the face. 

Bellamy blinked rapidly with shock. Clarke was lying unconscious on the sand with dark blood under her nose, but he couldn't move. He wanted to run to her, take her in his arms to make sure she was alright, but he just couldn't move. 

"Really?" Murphy suddenly said, angry. "Did you _really_ have to knock her out like that?" 

"It depends," Echo replied dryly. "Would you rather have her grab a gun and shoot you again?"

Murphy shook his head with disapprobation then walked to Clarke, followed by Jackson. As they were both making sure she was going to be fine, Bellamy looked around him, trying to understand what happened to her. 

"What is wrong with her?" Emori asked, sounding worried.

"I don't know," Jackson replied. "She's sweating. Her skin is red, dry and hot, but her pupils are completely dilated. It's obviously not a heat stroke as she thought it was."

"Why is she the only one affected by whatever that is?" Miller asked.

"I don't know, I'm sorry. I've never seen such symptoms before."

Bellamy glanced at Murphy who had teared a piece of fabric from his shirt (really? again?) and was now wiping off the dark blood under her nose.

Then, it clicked in his head. "Her blood."

"Yeah," Murphy replied a little cocky, "I'm already on it as you can see."

God, Murphy could be such a pain in the ass sometimes.

"No, that's not-" He paused as he tried to calm himself down, but he failed miserably. "She's the only nightblood. Jackson, could it be possible that-"

"I know what you're thinking, Bellamy," Jackson cut him with this look of pity, "but we've been on this moon for more than two weeks now and she's been fine until now. If her blood was the cause, we would have seen symptoms earlier and they would have appeared more gradually."

"But that's the only thing that makes sense!" Bellamy heard himself exclaim with desperation. "She's healthy. She ate and drank the same food and water as we did, she-"

"Well, it could be her blood," Jackson cut him again but thoughtfully this time. "Her blood could be reacting to someting in this desert." 

"To what?" Murphy asked, concerned as he glanced around.

There was a moment of silence as they all tried to think of something that could explain what happened to Clarke when-

"The suns are rapidly getting closer to each other," Echo said as she looked in the sky. "There's going to be an eclipse today."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How do you guys feel about the story so far? Constructive criticism is always welcome <3


	15. The weight of the words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How are we all feeling after last episode, huh? 
> 
> That ending wrecked me. I mean, I never thought desperation could be this beautiful. I need more of it. 
> 
>  
> 
> As for this chapter, I have to warn that it continues to touch on Clarke's suicidal ideation in the beginning.

"There's going to be an eclipse today." 

Echo's voice startled Bellamy, and he realised he'd forgotten about her for a moment. 

"Who fucking cares about an eclipse right now?" Murphy replied.

Bellamy hardly looked away from Clarke's inconscious body, his eyes traveling first to Murphy and Jackson beside her then to Echo standing behind them. She was staring at the sky with this fascinated look on her face as if Clarke hadn't just tried to- 

He blinked rapidly as he tried to push what just happened out of his mind, but it wouldn't go away...

_The clicking sound of the safety being pulled off._

No, he couldn't think about that. 

_Clarke's shaking hand holding the gun to her temple._

He couldn't. He couldn't.

 _"What I should have done a long time ago," she'd said._

He couldn't. He couldn't. He couldn't.

_The relief on her face when she'd closed her eyes._

Shit. He couldn't think about anything else.

Bellamy suddenly crashed on his knees, closing his eyes shut to keep tears from falling as he threw up the little he had in his stomach. 

"Bellamy!" Echo screamed.

The relief on Clarke's face the moment before she would have pulled the trigger to end her own life, that wasn't just her hallucinating. She hadn't tried to kill herself because she was scared or paranoid, she'd tried to kill herself because she wanted, needed to.

"Don't!" Jackson warned Echo. "Don't go to him and don't touch him!"

The thought of Clarke finding relief through death was making him so fucking sick to his heart.

"But-"

"Echo, I know you're worried right now but you have to listen to me. Bellamy hugged Clarke and, if she isn't sick because of her nightblood, it may be contagious." 

"Are you serious?" Murphy asked. "I'm wiping off the blood on her face righ now!"

"Don't you think I know that? I needed to check her vital signs, but no one asked you to come check on her too, Murphy. You did that on your own." Bellamy had never heard Jackson speaking this bluntly before.

"What did you expect, exactly?" Murphy replied. "That I'd just stand there without giving a shit about-"

"I mean, I wouldn't have been surprised if you had."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, it's not like you're the most selfless person here."

"That's rich coming from the person who wanted to abandon his friends in a cave because he was hungry!"

"Don't you-"

"That's enough!" Bellamy interjected loudly before things got out of hand. "I'm fine." He shakingly wiped his mouth with his sleeve then opened his eyes. He tried hard not to look at Clarke's unconscious body, but he couldn't help it. His eyes were drawn to her. "I'm fine," he repeated absently.

"Say that one more time, and I might believe you," Murphy said sarcastically. "No one's _fine_ right now." 

Murphy had his eyes frowned at Clarke, thoughtful, and Bellamy couldn't shake off this gut feeling that something was up with him. He forced himself up, ignoring the best he could the painful cuts all over his body. 

"What is it that you're not telling us, Murphy?" 

"What are you talking about?" He had this defensive tone in his voice.

"I know you," Bellamy said as he walked to him. "You're hiding something, and I'm asking you what it is."

Murphy closed his eyes for a moment as he sighed, then he resignedly got up to face him. "Nothing that concerns you, Bellamy." 

"Murphy-"

"Like I said, nothing that concerns you."

Bellamy was already so damn pissed at everything, and Murphy was only infuriating him even more. He was pissed at Murphy for knowing something he didn't, and he'd lie if he said he didn't want to punch him in the face. 

He was also pissed at this place, this moon, for all the shit that went down since they landed (couldn't they catch a fucking break?).

But, most of all, he was pissed at himself for failing Clarke, for not making her feel safer. He lost her once, and he almost lost her again. He didn't deserve her, and all that rage building inside of him made him want to scream until his lungs gave out. 

That rage he was feeling, it was almost as powerful as when he-

No, he couldn't let his mind go there. 

The tears prickling in Bellamy's eyes were now ones of anger as he glared at Murphy. "Spit it out, or I'll make you."

Murphy was looking at him as if he'd seen a ghost or something. "You can be so dramatic sometimes," he replied. "You know that, right?" 

"I swear to God, Murphy, if you don't tell me I'll-"

"Fine!" Murphy cut him. "I'll tell you." He paused, looking conflicted as he glanced at Clarke. "It's not- It's not the first time." Bellamy blinked as Murphy's words started to sink in. "A month or so after Praimfaya," Murphy furrowed his brow, "she put a gun on her head, but she didn't go through with it, obviously."

Bellamy's rage disappeared as horror bloomed in his stomach. "How do you know that?" 

"How do you think I know that, dumbass? She told me."

Bellamy's mouth was so dry that it hurt when he swallowed. "Why didn't she tell _me_?" he managed to articulate.

Murphy rolled his eyes. "I don't know, maybe because you don't talk to her?"

Bellamy couln't deny that Murphy was right. It's not that he didn't want to talk to Clarke, it's that he didn't know what to say or how to say it. 

He didn't know how to deal with the weight of all the unsaid words between them, and he didn't know how to deal with the weight of the words that had been spoken.

 _I was in love with you before Praimfaya. I was in love with who you were, but you're not this person anymore_ , she had told him the night before the landing. _I want for us to be friends._

______________________

_Bellamy knew he shouldn't drink too much too quickly, but he couldn't stop himself from taking a long sip of his drink every time Clarke would laugh at one of Murphy's (stupid) jokes. Before he realised it, he had finished his second drink of hard liquor and had poured himself a third one._

__

_Why was she laughing that much? Murphy wasn't even that funny._

_He was lost in his thoughts, his eyes staring absently at the drink in his hand, when he caught a whiff of Clare's pretty scent as she sat (dangerously) close to him. How could the soap they all use smell better on her? He couldn't tell, but he could tell it was torturing him._

_His eyes slowly went up her body until they landed on hers. "Clarke," he said, hoping he didn't sound too dry as the unpleasant (that must be a euphemism, right?) memory of Murphy's body pressed against hers came crushing him. "Having fun?"_

_She seemed troubled as she looked at him, and he tried not to think of how easy it would be to just lean in and-_

_"-wanted to talk to you."_

_'That can't be good', he thought. He finished his drink in one gulp before she could say more._

_"I wanted to explain myself, because I feel as if I was being awkward around you lately, and-" She paused, and his heart raced up. "I think it's because I was in love with you before Praimfaya."_

_Clarke's words felt like a thunderbolt hitting him._

_'I was in love with you'._

_He swallowed._

_Fuck._

_Really?_

_"I was in love with who you were, but you're not this person anymore, and- and I just had a hard time getting to know who are now."_

_She was talking as if the words were burning her lips, and the more she talked the more Bellamy feared he might just throw up right there. 'You're not this person anymore'. Yeah, he wasn't._

_"I kept thinking of who we were, but I need to accept that we both changed. This moon could be the opportunity to start something new for myself, but I don't want to feel like a stranger to you because you're too important to me. So, I want for us to be friends."_

_Bellamy stared at her for a long moment. He couldn't speak, and he felt numbed by the weight of these last words. 'I want for us to be friends'._

_He glanced at Murphy playing pool further away (wait, was Murphy really looking at them right now? for fuck's sake-) then stared back at Clarke. That fucked up thing going on between Murphy and her, it couldn't be serious, could it?_

_"Is this what you really want?" he asked her apprehensively. "For us to be friends?"_

_It seemed to take all the time in the world before she replied._

_"It is. Isn't it what you want too?"_

_Was it what he wanted too? He-_

_Bellamy's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Echo laughing, startling him. He'd forgotten about her, and it made him feel incredibly guilty. He turned his head to his girlfriend with his brow furrowed. He loved her, didn't he? The last three years, it had to mean something, right? It had to. When he turned his eyes back to Clarke, he was only more confused about his feelings._

_And frankly, he was confused about Clarke's feelings too. If she stopped loving him after Praimfaya, then why did she called him, only him, every day for six years?_

_"You called me every day for six years," he heard himself say hoarsely._

_"Who told you?" she asked with wide eyes._

_"Madi."_

_Clarke looked embarassed, and he felt bad about it. He shouldn't have said that, and he shouldn't have drank that much. Shit._

_When Bellamy pushed himself up, he realised how drunk he really was. The walls were spinning around him as he walked out of the room. He didn't know where he was going, he just knew that he needed to get out of there._

_But Clarke caught up with him in the narrow corridor. When she grabbed his bare forearm, goosebumps scattered across his skin at an alarming rate._

_"You didn't answer," she said._

_Bellamy sighed, realising how tense he was feeling about this friendship thing. But, he needed to get his shit together and tell her he could be her friend. Because he could, right? Be her friend? Yes, he could. Probably._

_He turned to her, and his eyes instantly fell on her mouth. Why the hell seeing her bitting her bottom lip made him feel so hot? Fuck, he wanted to touch those perfect lips. He hadn't even realised he had closed the distance between them until his chest was suddenly brushing against hers._

_God, she was smelling so good and her mouth was so-_

_Bellamy couldn't resist, not really. He put his left hand on the wall near her head, then he softly took her chin in his right one. He trailed his thumb on her smooth, ivory skin until it touched her lip. He'd never wanted to kiss her so badly than now, and it surprised him because he clearly remembered all those nights he used to spend in his tent near the dropship thinking about her-_

_He withdrawed his thumb, and his eyes went up her face until they clinged to hers. Was she even real right now? Or was he still on the Ring dreaming about her?_

_All the things we wanted to say to her._

_He wanted to tell her that he missed her so much, every day, for six years. That he had to learn how to live without her but, fuck, he couldn't lose her again. That if she wanted him to be her friend, then so be it._

_It took him a second to realise he hadn't thought but said these words out loud and, when he did realise, he quickly removed his hand and took two steps away from her. Why did he touch her lip like that? What was wrong with him? He'd never been this impulsive with her before._

_And he hadn't been this impulsive in a long time._

_Bellamy ran his hand through his hair nervously, his eyes alterning between Clarke and the door leading to the lounge. God, he must be the shittiest boyfriend ever right now._

_"You should go back to Echo," Clarke said almost quietly, and he knew, judging by the tone of her voice, that he fucked up bad._

_Before he could react, he caught the sight of Raven and Shaw walking toward them out of the corner of his eye. Once they had walked past them, Clarke left without a word and Bellamy let her._

_He slowly slided down against the wall until he was sitting, his knees bent. At one point, Murphy (of course, it had to be him) walked out of the lounge._

_"Where's Clarke?" Murphy asked, but Bellamy could only stare absently at the wall facing him._

_Murphy sat silently next to him until he said, "Wanna talk about it?"_

_Bellamy didn't reply, and neither of them talked for a while._

_Then, "I'm sorry," Bellamy said quietly._

_"For what?"_

_"For being a shitty friend today."_

_"It's fine. I get it."_

_"It's not fine, Murphy. It hadn't been fine since-", he paused, leaving the words unsaid, but he knew Murphy knew what he was talking about. "It'll never be fine."_

_"Don't be dramatic. It'll be-"_

_But he was already up, and he left without looking back at Murphy._

_Bellamy was sitting alone on the edge of his bed now, his head pressed in his hands, and he couldn't remember walking to the bedroom._

_After a while, he heard Echo saying, "Bellamy?", and, when he didn't answer, she got down on her knees in front of him, softly taking his head in both her hands. "What's wrong? Talk to me." He lifted his head, his eyes meeting hers. "It's about Clarke, isn't it?"_

_The words were frozen in his mouth, refusing to escape._

_"I saw you two leaving the lounge. I'd ask if you wanna talk about whatever happened, but you- you never wanna talk about her," she said with sadness in her eyes._

_And she was right, he didn't want to talk about Clarke._

_He wanted to talk about them. "What we have, you and I, what we had on the Ring, it means something, right?"_

_"Of course," she replied. "It means something. I love you."_

_Then, Bellamy drunkenly pulled her up against him on the bed, helping her wrap her legs around him as he kissed her tenderly. He deepened the kiss because he needed more of her, but she withdrew her mouth from his._

_"What is it?" he asked, worryingly._

_"I know you loved her before we went to space."_

_"Echo-"_

_"Please, let me talk."_

_He nodded._

_"It was obvious, you know. The way you looked at her, the way you protected her. If she hadn't stayed behind to save us, you'd be with her now." He shook his head dismissively, but she ignored him. "I accepted that truth a long time ago, but did you?"_

_Did he?_

_He used to dream about what could have been if Clarke had went to space with him. Fuck, that's all he did for years. But, he never could have imagined that she loved him the same way he loved her, because... how could a person so luminous, so fierce, love him?_

_All these months spent with her, he never acted on his feelings because he didn't think he deserved her._

_But tonight, she'd told him she used to love him too._

_Had he heard those radio calls, maybe it would have changed everything._

_But he didn't hear them, and he thought she had died._

_He moved on from her._

_"Yes, I loved her, but it doesn't matter anymore. We can't change what happened, and I love you now." His fingers digged into the skin of her waist. "I love you," he repeated._

_Echo closed her eyes only for a moment as if to gather some courage. "Bellamy, I know you told me nothing would change on the ground, but the truth is that something changed between us. I know it must be hard to grieve someone for six years only to realise they didn't die, but I feel like there's more to it. What we have together... We're not perfect, but I love what we have. It's simple, and sweet, but you need to be honest with me. And, most of all, you need to be honest with yourself." She paused, sighing deeply before continuing. "Are you sure it is me and not her that you want?"_

_He swallowed, hesitant for only a moment, then, "I want you."_

_"Bellamy, I'd understand if-"_

_"I love you, Echo. I really do. I know that, the two of us, it hasn't been easy the first years on the Ring. There are things I did... We never talked about what happened, but I'm sorry for the way I treated you when you were only trying to help me. I used you, but you forgave me anyway."_

_"Bellamy-"_

_"All I want to say is, I love what we have too. I don't want to lose it." He wasn't lying. He did love her, and didn't want to lose what they had because it really was simple, and sweet._

_"What about Clarke?"_

_"I- I used to love her, but it's been years since. I have you now, and, this time, I can promise you that nothing will change between us on the ground. Tomorrow, we land on this beautiful moon and we find the perfect spot for us to build a life together. What do you say?"_

_It was the truth, right? Nothing would change._

_"Bellamy, don't make promises you can't keep."_

_"Well, I can't promise about the moon being beautiful, but I can promise about us."_

_She smiled after a moment. "I'd like that," she whispered as she leaned in to kiss him deeply. She only pulled away only to murmur, "It could our last night together, just the two of us, for a while."_

_"We better make the most of it then," he replied as he undressed her._

__

_The two of them that night, it wasn't passionate. It never really was, but it was tender, and caring, and warm, and good, and Bellamy loved every second of it. But once they were done and Echo fell asleep on his side, his thoughts wandered to Clarke and his heart raced up a little._

______________________

Bellamy shook his head dismissively, pushing the memory away.

"We need to keep going," Miller said as he glanced at the mountains not so far away. "We're almost there."

"What about Clarke?" Emori asked.

Murphy's eyes were glaring at Echo. "Maybe if you didn't knock her out, we-" 

"What was I supposed to do, Murphy?"

"We could have tied her up!"

"It was the only way, and you know it. She was a danger to herself, and to us. I saved her life, and I saved ours."

Bellamy wasn't listening to them. "I'll carry her," he decided suddenly, his eyes on Clarke.

Echo furrowed her brow. "Bellamy, you can barely walk." 

"I can do it," Miller suggested. "I can carry her." 

"Nate, you can't," Jackson said. "We still don't know if she's contagious."

"It's a risk we'll have to take," Miller replied as he walked to Clarke, but Bellamy had already beaten him to it.

"I said I'll carry her," he said, firmly, his voice sounding more harsh that he intended to. 

He reached down and lifted her in his arms, brushing off the sensation of the burning cuts on his body as he did so. She felt so small, and fragile, and pale, and lifeless, and it pained him. 

"Let's go." 

No one dared to stop him, and he ignored their stare as he started to walk.

Bellamy held Clarke's unconscious body close to his chest. He needed to feel her warmth against him to be reminded that she was alive, that he had to walk, and walk, and walk even if his body was screaming him to give up. _Clarke's alive_ , he kept thinking like a mantra as he put one foot in front of another. _Clarke's alive. Clarke's alive._

He fell on his knees an hour later, his whole body trembling.

"Bellamy," Miller said gently. "I'll carry her." He hadn't realised he had his hands tightly clutched at her body until Miller tried to take her from him. "I'll take care of her, I promise." Bellamy nodded, his hands slowly letting go of her. "There, see?" Miller had her now, and Bellamy felt empty. "You have to get up and keep walking. We're so close, we can't give up now." 

Yeah, he couldn't give up. 

He forced himself up.

Fuck, his whole body was aching so badly. 

"Bellamy?" Miller asked, sounding suddenly worried. "Are you alright, man?" 

Was he?

"Your wounds," Jackson said, "let me see them." 

Bellamy's hands absently lifted a bit of his black shirt, and Jackson's eyes widened at the sight of his stomach. 

"What is it?" Murphy asked, walking to them. His eyes landed on Bellamy's skin, then he instantly exchanged a meaningful look with Jackson. "We need to hurry."

"I agree," Jackson replied. "Bellamy, you lost a lot of blood and your cuts are getting infected."

"But you can help him, right?" Murphy asked hastily. 

"I-" Jackson hesitated. "Once we get to the mountains and find a source of water, I can try to clean the cuts, but-"

"But?" 

"We'll see once we get there, ok?"

Bellamy ignored everyone's worried stare on him as he started to walk again. He felt hot, feverish, and when he couldn't walk anymore, Murphy offered him to lean on him for support.

"Thank you," Bellamy told him weakly. 

"You can thank me by not dying," Murphy replied with a serious tone. 

"Who's being dramatic now, huh?"

Murphy smiled faintly, and they continued to walk. Bellamy felt as if his body was being torn apart, and he knew he couldn't go on much longer even with Murphy's help. He knew he should be worried for himself, but his thoughts were only on Clarke. She seemed to get worse.

They were close to the foot of the mountain when the two suns, high in the sky, started to eclipse.

"Shit!" Miller suddenly exclaimed. "Eric, hurry! Something's wrong with her!"

But before Bellamy could see what was going on with Clarke, he crumbled unconscious on the ground.

______________________

_Bellamy had ignored Clarke for the past two weeks because he couldn't bear the weight of her eyes on him. Every time his eyes had met hers, he could only see ghosts in them. The ghost of her, the ghost of him, and the ghost of the both of them. But, when she said, "I'm sorry, guys, I think I'm gonna be sick," as she ran away from the campfire, he felt worried. And when she didn't came back after a while, he missed her eyes._

__

_"I'll go see if Clarke's alright," he said as he walked away._

_The sky was dark, and he couldn't see far away in front of him. Where was she?_

_"Clarke?" he screamed, worried. "I can't see you in the dark. Are you alright?"_

_But then, the transport ship appeared in the sky and flamboyant strings of emerald green light were suddenly surrounding him, swirling around him. He barely looked at them, his eyes instantly searching for Clarke._

_He found her, standing on her knees and palms in the distance. "Clarke!" he shouted as he quickly walked in her direction. She heard him, but her eyes went behind him and a look of horror plastered her face._

_What did she see? But he wouldn't know because someone (creepy as hell with a hood and dark clothes) had appeared out of nowhere and had pushed her. He shivered from dread as he saw her fell on her back, and he screamed her name again._

_He wanted to run to her, but he couldn't as someone else were attacking him. He tried to reach for his gun._

_"Bellamy!" He turned his head almost violently to Clarke. "It's a trap!"_

_'Shit', he thought as it clicked in his head. 'The transport ship'. He nodded to her, hoping she could see him do so, and he finally got a grip of his gun. He didn't hesitate to fire (probably too many shots) at the person attacking him._

_Bellamy started to run the fastest he could, his eyes only on Clarke. She was lying on her back, fighting for air as someone was choking her._

_Fuck, he wasn't gonna get to her in time._

_He aimed his gun and fired as he continued to run, but he missed._

_"Clarke!" he screamed desperately._

_He saw her stab her attacker, who let go of her only to slap her hard in the face. Her head knocked against the ground, and Bellamy felt his blood boil._

_He wasn't running fast enough, so he pushed himself harder. His lungs were burning, but he couldn't care less._

_"They are going to blow up the transport ship!" she shouted._

_Bellamy stopped dead in his track, noticing another person holding an explosive near her._

_Fuck._

_He was about to shot that person, but the one who attacked Clarke was walking back to her. So, he aimed his gun behind her, instead, and shot a few times. He missed again, and he could swear his heart had stopped beating from fear as he was now looking at her fighting for her life. She was trying to keep the knife away from her throat._

_Bellamy took a deep breath, aiming his gun. He wasn't going to miss this time._

_But when he pulled the trigger, nothing happened. The magazine was empty._

_She was too far away._

_As he was helplessly staring at her, she slightly turned her head to him and shouted, "The explosive!"_

_Bellamy instantly knew what she wanted him to do as he glanced at the person holding the explosive. Clarke wanted him to let her die so he could save the transport ship._

_As he started to run again, he tried hard to convince himself that he was going to listen her, that he was going to save the transport ship._

_But he couldn't let her die again. He just couldn't._

_So he made the choice to charge at her attacker, pinning them on the ground as he grabbed the knife near him. He then killed them with a stab in the neck, bleeding them to death without even blinking. And, as he heard the powerful explosion not far away from them, he threw himself on top of Clarke to cover her as the shock wave hit them._

_After a moment, he pulled a little away from her only to look into her eyes._

_Desperately searching for the ghosts he'd seen in them for the past two weeks._

_He couldn't lose her again._

_Fuck, he couldn't._

_He needed her._

_The moment Clarke asked him, "Why did you save me?", Bellamy realised that he couldn't keep the promise he made to Echo the night before the landing._

_Because he'd also realised that he never fell out of love with Clarke._

__

______________________

Bellamy opened his eyes with difficulty as a bright light was blinding him.

"I thought you'd never wake up."

Was it Murphy? It sounded like him.

His eyes finally adjusted, and a feeling of dread ran down his spine as he looked at the stone walls covered with fluorescent purple mushrooms surrounding him.

"Hey, everything's fine." 

Then, his eyes landed on Murphy, who was sitting near him, and he realised he was lying on a bed. He had a drip connected to his left arm. 

"What's going on?" His voice sounded weak, and his mouth was dry. 

"We're safe now," Murphy replied. 

Safe?

"How long have I been out?" 

"Three days, more or less."

Bellamy suddenly recalled the sensation of holding Clarke's unconscious body against him. "How's Clarke? Where is she?" 

Murphy snorted. "I wondered how much time it would take you to pronounce her name." He paused, smiling. "She's fine." That was all he wanted to hear. "I'm sure you have lot of questions right now."

He did. 

"What happened? Are we back in the cave?"

Murphy smirked at him, raising a brow. "Oh, Bellamy," he said. "You missed a lot, and I mean a _lot_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to thank you all for the feedback! If you read this story and love it, I'm happy ♡


	16. Sand splashing everywhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it took me so long to update! 
> 
> Note : Considering the following chapters are addressing the aftermath of Clarke's suicide attempt in the desert, I decided to update the tags instead of putting a warning in the beginning of each one. It's going to be a rough ride for a while - especially for Bellamy, I won't lie -, but it's eventually going to get better, I promise.

  
_Click._

A twinge of panic pulsed through Bellamy's veins, a sense of dread powerful enough to set his aching body into motion. In a split second, he had kicked the sheets away, removed the tube connected to his arm and forced himself to sit at the edge of the bed. He closed his eyes and tried to focus his attention on his bare toes brushing against the cold stone floor, on the clean piny scent lingering on his skin, on anything else but the panic mushrooming in his heart, in his head, in his whole being. 

_Click._

His breath caught in his throat, and he clutched at the mattress underneath him. _'Clarke, what are you doing?'_ His knuckles turned white, but he clutched harder. _'What I should have done a long time ago.'_ Harder, and harder, and then her name came out of his mouth in a sharp breath, a sharp pain that made tears prickle behind his eyelids. 

Bellamy knew what it was to live in a world empty of Clarke Griffin, empty of her beautiful, burning light, and the mere thought of going back to that world terrified him to his very core. 

Her death in Praimfaya had literally driven him to insanity, made him flirt dangerously with his own end so he could catch glimpses of her ghost. He had gone through weeks of chasing her, weeks of craving her silent stare at him until, one day, she had whispered his name in his ear. 

_'Bellamy.'_

The moment he had felt the warmth of her breath on his skin, had felt the silk of her hand reaching his cheek to palm it, he had thought he must be dead, too. 

_'You can't stop fighting. You can't abandon your sister for a ghost.'_

He had felt her forehead touching his, her nose bumping with his. 

_'You have so much to live for, so much ahead of you.'_

He had felt her soft lips against his. 

_'I'm not worth dying for, Bellamy. You have to let me go.'_

He had shaken his head sadly, desperately, refusing to go on without her because - how could he? He was only half of a whole. He was the heart and she was the head. They completed each other, were made for each other. He couldn't fully beat on his own, at least not in the way he was made to. 

_'I have to go now.'_

He had begged her to stay with him, but she had walked away and never came back. She had left him, again. Bellamy had never wanted to let go of Clarke, but she had given him no choice. And the only thing that had pushed him to live after her disappearance, was the thought of O counting on him to come back to the ground, to come back to her. 

He couldn't abandon his sister.

Only now, he didn't have a sister to go back to, did he? 

_'You can't save someone who's already dead'_. He had refused to believe her, but when he had stood still and refused to fight for his life, when she hadn't budge at the sight of him giving up, he had had no other choice but to face the fact that his sister was dead.

O had died sometimes in the past six years and, from her ashes, Blodreina had risen. 

Bellamy had grieved Clarke's death on the Ring when he should have grieved his sister's, too. 

_Click._

Three days ago, he nearly lost Clarke again, and, to him, a world without her wasn't worth fighting for - not when he didn't have a sister to go back to anymore. 

"Hey." Murphy's voice and hand on his shoulder made him jolt upright. "We went throught a lot of shit recently, but it's over now. We're safe, Bellamy. This place, it's- it's all we ever drea-"

"Where are my clothes?"

 _Click._

Bellamy moved his shoulder away, a cold sensation lingering where his friend's hand rested a moment ago. The truth was, he didn't care about whatever that place was, nor whatever he had missed. He only cared about finding his way back to Clarke.

It took Murphy a few seconds to answer. "In the trash for sure." There was no hint of a smile in his tone anymore, only a resignation. "You were a mess of sweat and blood, and so were your clothes. Here-" 

Bellamy opened his eyes and looked at the pair of black boots, black pants and the plain grey sweater that were being handed to him. He noticed only now that Murphy was wearing similar ones, but he had no time to lose in asking where he got them - or from whom. He ignored Murphy's stare on him as he took the clothes and put them on the bed next to him, and he also ignored the exhaustion of his body when he forced himself up. _Click._ With his left hand still clutched at the mattress to help keep his balance, he slowly put the pants on with his right one. 

Once he pulled the hospital gown over his head, his eyes landed with confusion on the tiny, completely healed, white scars all over his skin. _What the hell?_ Murphy had said he'd been out for three days, but wounds couldn't heal this much in only days.

_Click._

"Interested to know how you healed so fast?" Murphy asked, tentatively.

"No." Bellamy turned his back to Murphy, who sighed heavily, then threw the hospital gown away in a swift movement, put the sweater on, and rolled the sleeves up his forearms. "Tell me where she is, Murphy." He reached for a boot as he waited for an answer.

 _Click._ Bellamy shook his head, tried to shake that fucking sound out of his mind. _Click._ More tears welled up in his eyes, so he closed them again. _Click._ He thought he heard Murphy say something but wasn't sure. _Click._ Had to bit his lip until it bled to keep a sob from escaping his throat. _Click._ The boot slipped out of his hand. _Click._ He felt his knees buckling underneath him, put both his hands on his ears. 'Stop!' He wanted to scream. 'Stop! Stop! Stop!' But it only got louder as it played over and over.

Murphy's hand was back on his shoulder, a gentle squeeze. "Bellamy? What's wrong?" 

_Click._

"Hey, talk to me." Murphy sounded closer, as if he had kneeled down in front of him.

He could hardly breathe, could only gulp for air. His hands fell before him, palms on the cold stone floor. "Can't."

 _Click._

"How about we take a deep breath together, huh? What d'you say?"

He nodded faintly.

 _Click._

"Just breathe with me."

He tried, but his stupid lungs wouldn't seem to work. Were they broken? Maybe he would never breathe properly again.

 _Click._

"It's okay, we'll just try another one."

He tried another one.

"It was better, wasn't it?"

It was.

"Another one."

 _Click._

Air went into his lungs more easily. 

"Good. Another one."

He took another deep breath, and another, and another, until it felt like his lungs weren't so stupid anymore. He could breathe.

 _Click._

Murphy kept his hand on his shoulder as he probably waited for him to be ready to open up about what was wrong, but- should he, though? He just couldn't remember the last time he had truly opened up to someone about his feelings, and, besides, he had to-

"I know you want to see Clarke," Murphy said as if reading his mind, "but you're in no condition to go anywhere." 

_Click._

Murphy was right, of course. Bellamy was not only a complete mess right now, but he wasn't even sure he could stand up and walk by himself. 

"You can't-" Murphy paused. "You can't keep bottling up. You know that, right?" 

He knew. 

_Click._

A couple of minutes went by without any of them saying anything, then the words slipped out of his mouth, "I failed her." Bellamy opened his eyes, looking at Murphy who was - indeed - kneeling in front of him, a worried expression on his face. "I couldn't make her feel safe enough, I couldn't save her. I-I hear her- clicking the safety off again and again." A tear found a way out, fell down his face, ran through his parted lips into his mouth. "It. doesn't. stop. I can't- I need it to stop. _Please._ "

Tears welled up in Murphy's eyes, too. "I-I can't stop thinking about it either, but everything's gonna be okay now. I promise." 

It was the way Murphy's voice cracked at every one of the words he said that made Bellamy realise he wasn't the only one feeling utterly shattered by what had happened in the desert. And with that realisation, he allowed himself to break down into tears in his friend's arms.  
  


**______________________**

  


_Three days earlier_

"I fucked up," Emori said. "I basically told Clarke that Bellamy has moved on from her. I genuinely thought he had, but, now, with the way he's staring at her, I can see how wrong I was. I don't think he ever stopped loving her." Her brows furrowed in guilt as she continued. "I remember the look of hurt in her eyes and I- I just can't stop thinking that maybe if I had kept my mouth shut..."

Murphy shook his head at her. "What happened isn't your fault." 

"But-"

"There's no 'but'."

"It's just that-"

"It isn't your fault."

 _It isn't your fault because it's mine._

He wished he had told her that instead, but he didn't have the courage to face his own guilt and even less sharing it with someone. They both kept silent for a while as they walked, then Emori took a peak over her shoulder and said, "I feel bad for Echo."

Murphy took a look over his shoulder at Echo and saw she was walking way behind everyone else with her head down. Granted, it was hard not to feel bad for her when her boyfriend wasn't giving a single shit about her. For the past hour, Bellamy had been walking with his eyes desperately glued to Clarke's unconscious body in his arms, as if nothing else existed but her. It was kind of an awkward situation, but Murphy couldn't say it was a shocker.

He shrugged. "She used to be a spy, she should have seen it coming." 

"John-"

"What? I'm not feeling sorry for her after what she pulled." He knew he was being petty but couldn't help it.

"Echo only did what she thought was necessary to save both Clarke's life and ours."

"What she did was certainly not necessary and it's honestly concerning that she thought it was." 

"At least she did something to stop Clarke from putting a bullet in her own brain unlike the rest of us!" Emori had raised her voice.

Miller gave them an interrogating look, but they both ignored him. 

Murphy tried to brush her hurtful words off as he couldn't reply, couldn't face the guilt that came crashing back at him. He turned his head away from her, gripped at the straps of his backpack, clenched his lips into a thin line and just continued to walk under the orange light of the two suns slowly coming together.

Then, after a minute or so, "I'm sorry," she told him. "It wasn't fair of me to say that."

"It's fine."

"It's not."

"It'll be." 

"John-"

"I said it's fine." He kept his eyes on the mountain in front of him the distance, but he had no doubt she was staring at him, probably studying him. 

"It wasn't fair of me to say that because you tried to help her." 

"Yeah, and we all know how well it went." If Clarke hadn't been shaking like a leaf while pulling the trigger, twice, he'd surely be dead by now.

"What matters is that you tried. I'm proud of you for that."

He glanced at her and saw her smile, an offering for a truce, and he couldn't resist smiling back. 

They had been walking for a couple more minutes when Emori said, "The tears of rage Bellamy had in his eyes when he told you to spit it out earlier, it made me think of when he, you know-"

"I know." There was no way Murphy could ever forget the day after Praimfaya, the day Bellamy was such an emotional wreck that he had screamed, cried and destroyed things out of desparation, loss and rage for hours. Every time someone had tried to get nowhere near him, they had been greeted with flying objects, curse words and threats. "It was like seeing a ghost." 

Sure, Murphy had made the choice to reveal the truth to Bellamy because he didn't want to get his head ripped off, but that wasn't the only reason why. 

That night in the lounge when Clarke had told him she almost committed suicide a few weeks after Praimfaya, Murphy had understood because he almost did it, too, once. Stuck in the lighthouse bunker, thinking he'd never get out, wanting to end it. He couldn't tell Clarke about it that night, didn't have the strenght to, but he had remembered feeling it, the cold barrel of the gun burning the skin under his chin, the cold irony of dying by his own hands burning his mind. 

So, Murphy had understood what she went through, and that was precisely why he thought he had failed her that night. He had wanted so badly to believe her when she had told him she was past it, but, the truth was, deep down, he knew it was a lie she made to protect herself. He should have shared his trauma with her that night, should have insisted they help each other heal, but he hadn't. He hadn't because he was nothing more than a coward who never faced and dealt with his own issues.

It was easier to run away from them.

Seeing Clarke put a gun to her head, it made him so fucking sick to his stomach. He wished he could get rid of this image of her, push it out of his mind and never talk about it, ever again, but- but he knew it shouldn't be swept under the rug, not again. It should be talked about, needed to be talked about, and that was why he had spit the truth to Bellamy. 

He had to make sure someone else knew, in case he couldn't do better than running away again.

Murphy was so rapt in his thoughts that it startled him when he heard Emori talk again. "I know the first weeks on the Ring were shit," she said, "but at least we had each other." He could hear a tremble in her voice. "Clarke had no one. Sure, she eventually found Madi, but a child isn't the same as a friend. She must have been so lonely in a way."

Murphy stayed silent, remembering the first time he'd seen Clarke after waking up from cryo. He was just so fucking angry at her for betraying them and leaving Bellamy to die in the fighting pits, but, the moment he'd looked into her eyes, he couldn't be. The loneliness he'd found in the light blue of them made him feel like he was staring into a mirror, into a reflection of his own tendency of isolating himself from others. So, without thinking twice about it, he'd told her, 'You know I was angry at you for betraying us, right? But I realised I've done worse myself,' hoping she'd understand this was his weird way of making amends with her - and she did understood, as always.

Emori let out a dry laugh, tears glittering in her eyes. "Clarke stayed behind so we could live, and, the awful truth is, we didn't even care about her when we came back, didn't care about all the shit she went through." She paused to wipe off a tear falling down her cheek. "When I saw her putting the gun on her- when she- _fuck_ , John. It just made me realise I spent six years appreciating what she did for us instead of who she was to us. She deserves better."

"She does." Clarke deserved a better friend than him, someone who hadn't constantly failed her these past two weeks. He'd been so wrapped up in his own thoughts, been so scared of what he might or might not feel for her, that he hadn't noticed how deeply hurt she truly was until he saw her hold a gun to her own head.

Neither of them talked for a while as they continued to walk. Then, "How long before Bellamy accepts Miller's help?", Emori asked, sounding worried.

Murphy snorted. "There's no way he's letting someone else carry her."

"It's been an hour, John. He can't go on like that much longer."

"I wouldn't bet on that."

"I'm serious!" 

"So am I," he replied. "If you had knew him before, we wouldn't even be having this discussion."

Emori shot him a confused look. "What are you talking about?"

He shook his head. "Nevermind." It wasn't anything concrete, only a feeling he had, but- he was pretty sure he wasn't imagining it.

The Bellamy who had delicately taken the gun away from Clarke and wrapped his arms around her with more warmth and affection than he had ever showed to anyone in years; the Bellamy who had so naturally tucked his head in Clarke's shoulder, who had softened with relief as he hugged her as if he was finally coming home; the Bellamy who had commanded Murphy to spit it out, who had had tears of rage in his eyes as he had done so; the Bellamy who had decided to carry Clarke even if his whole body was probably on fire from all the cuts he had; the Bellamy who was now desperately clutching at her body pressed against his chest; the Bellamy who wasn't hiding the myriad of emotions dancing in his eyes as he was staring at her; that Bellamy wasn't the same one with whom Murphy had shared the Ring with during six years. 

That Bellamy was the one before Praimfaya, the one driven by his heart, the one who was pretty unstoppable when it came to the ones he loved, when it came to Clarke. 

Murphy couldn't help but feel as if Bellamy was going back to his old self.

"He just looks _so_ sick!" Emori exclaimed. "His clothes are completely soaked with blood!" A dreadful thought seemed to cross her mind because her eyes widened in panic. "What if he's losing too much blood? Why isn't Jackson doing anything?"

"Emori," Murphy sighed, "Bellamy will be fine." 

Right? He had to.

"I can't lose another friend, John, not after..." She trailed off, but he knew what she meant. "I just - I just can't believe Monty and Harper are gone. I miss them so much."

"I miss them too." 

There were simply no words to describe how awful it was to wake up from cryo only to be told that Monty and Harper were gone, forever. Murphy would lie if he said he didn't resent them both for never saying goodbye. Sure, they had made a bunch of video messages for Bellamy and Clarke, but what did they leave for him, huh? _Nothing._ Fucking nothing. They lived and died and left nothing behind but a burning hole in his chest waiting for a closure that won't ever come. 

The piece of green fabric he'd spent hours searching on the mining ship was nothing more than a bandaid on a gaping wound, a way for him to say goodbye to his friends who didn't bother saying goodbye to him.

"We're not losing anyone else," he said with a convinction he didn't knew he had. "Bellamy and Clarke will both be fine, I promise."

"How could you promise that?" Emori blurted out, sounding more worried. "You don't know! You don't know if there's anything for us here! Maybe there's no..."

"Emori-"

"... food, no water, nothing. Maybe this moon isn't what we thought it'd be. We should..."

"Emori-"

"... have stayed on the ship. Coming down here, it was a mistake. It wasn't a survivor's move. It-" 

Murphy grabbed her by the hand, forcing her to stop and spin around to face him. "Hey," he said as he softly placed his palms on her cheeks. "We'll be fine." Her brown, worried eyes were piercing through him like a spear. "Remember what I said to you when we were stuck in that cave?" 

She bit her bottom lip, and Murphy's eyes went down to it. God, he wanted to kiss her but not now, not yet. He had to do it right this time. 

"I do."

"I need you to say it, _beautiful_." The pet name had slipped out of his mouth, making her flinch with hurt. It had been years since he had last said it to her.

"Whatever happens, we deal with it together."

"That's right." He swallowed, gathering all the courage he had. "I'm- I'm done running away."

"John-"

"I'm not leaving you- ever."

Emori stayed silent, staring at him with doubt in her eyes, but he caught a movement in the corner of his eye and quickly turned his head away from her. Bellamy had fallen on his knees, his whole body trembling and covered in sweat.

"Bellamy, I'll carry her," Miller offered, but he wouldn't budge. 

It was sickening to see him grip so tightly at Clarke, refusing to let her go. 

"I'll take care of her, I promise." 

Bellamy eventually nodded, his hands loosening just enough for Miller to reach down and take her. 

"There, see?" 

But he was only staring at his empty arms with a look of loss in his eyes. 

"You have to get up and keep walking. We're so close, we can't give up now." 

Murphy thought Bellamy might just pass out right there, but he pushed himself up absently.

"Bellamy?" Miller asked. "Are you alright, man?"

Jackson walked to them. "Your wounds, let me see them."

Murphy let go of Emori, a panic pulsing through him. "What is it?" he asked as he joined them, his eyes landing with shock on the red and swollen cuts on Bellamy's skin. _Shit_. "We need to hurry."

"I agree," Jackson said. "Bellamy, you lost a lot of blood and your cuts are getting infected."

Murphy's throat tighten. "But you can help him, right?" 

"I-" Jackson hesitated, and Murphy felt his his throat tighten even more. "Once we get to the mountains and find a source of water, I can try to clean the cuts, but-"

"But?"

"We'll see once we get there, ok?" 

As soon as the words escaped Jackson's mouth, Murphy knew Bellamy was fucked. He wasn't a doctor, but he didn't have to be to understand that his friend needed more than to get his cuts cleaned up with water. He needed antibiotics, only they didn't have any. Abby used them all to treat the people who were wounded after what went down in the gorge. 

The sudden thought of Bellamy dying from an infection scared the shit out of Murphy. 

God, that moon sucked- and it sucked bad. 

When Bellamy fell on his knees, again, later, Murphy didn't hesitate to help him. "Thank you," his friend told him with a weak and raspy voice. His skin was hot, feverish, and Murphy hoped the infection wasn't spreading too quickly. 

"You can thank me by not dying." He intended it as a joke, but the tone in his voice was only serious. 

"Who's being dramatic now, huh?"

Murphy's mouth curved into a smile, but it felt weak. 

They walked, and walked, and walked, and they were now so close to the nearest mountain. Murphy thought they were going to make it, all of them, but the two suns started to eclipse, casting a red light everywhere, and Miller suddenly exclaimed, "Shit! Eric, hurry! Something's wrong with her!", and his heart skipped more than one beat as he violently turned his head to Clarke in Miller's arms at the same time Bellamy fell inconscious on the ground next to him. 

"Bellamy!" Echo screamed as she rushed to him, her fingers landing beneath his ear as Harper once taught her. "I can't- I can't find a pulse!"

"She's convulsing!" Jackson said. "Lay her on the ground, now!"

There was too much to deal with at the same time. Murphy didn't know what to do, where to look. He was just standing there, panicked, shivers of dread running down his spine.

"Bellamy, wake up!" 

"We need to place her on her side to keep her airway clear!"

"Bellamy!"

"What the hell is going on with her? There's blood coming from everywhere!"

"He's not breathing!"

"I don't know! Fuck, I don't know!"

"Wake up, _please_!"

"Is she dying?"

"You can't die!"

Murphy finally snapped out of it. 

He went to Bellamy first. "Move," he told Echo as he put his cheek the closer he could to Bellamy's mouth without blocking it. He waited for only a few seconds, but he could swear it lasted hours. He thought he felt a breath on his skin, a relief in his heart, but he needed to be sure. His fingers went to the pulse point on Bellamy's neck. Nothing. Nothing. Fuck. Nothing. Then a beat, weak, too weak. 

"He's alive but barely." 

"He can't die!" Echo screamed with so much emotion, it took him aback. "He can't." 

"He won't." Murphy pushed himself up. "There's no fucking way Bellamy Blake dies."

He then turned to Clarke, who had stopped convulsing and was now lying on her back. His eyes widened with nothing but horror. Nightblood was running down her nose, her mouth, her eyes. Blood on her face, on her clothes, on the sand beneath her. Blood everywhere. Way too much blood. 

"Do something!" Murphy shouted at Jackson who was just staring at her absently. "Help her for fuck's safe! Stop the bleeding!"

"I can't," Jackson said with a quiet, defeated voice. 

"The hell, you can't! You're a doctor!"

"I can't stop the blood, Murphy. I- I think she's dying."

"What-" His brow furrowed in confusion. "But- but what about Bellamy?" He asked, clinging to a foolish hope. "He needs your help, too."

"He needs medicine we don't have." 

"But-"

"They're both dying," Jackson said with tears in his eyes, a desperation in his voice. "There's nothing I can do, I- I'm so sorry." He sobbed suddenly, and Miller wrapped his arms tightly around him, murmuring, "It's not your fault," in his ear.

Murphy's knees buckled underneath him at the cold realisation.

_Clarke and Bellamy were dying._

Clarke, who had been there for him these past weeks when he needed it, who had listened to him, who had called him out on his bullshit because she cared about him. Bellamy, who had never gave up on him on the Ring, who had never judged him for giving up on himself, who had never stopped trying to make him fight again. 

They were both dying only feet apart, and Murphy was going to lose two of his best friends, again, and he wouldn't get to say goodbye, again. 

It was fucked up, really, nothing more than a sick joke from the universe. As if they haven't all suffered more than enough, as if they haven't all sacrificed more than enough - and for what? It hadn't been worth it. Monty, Harper. Bellamy, Clarke. It'd never be worth to survive if the price to pay was to keep losing the people he had close. 

A pained scream escaped his throat as his hands clutched at the sand surrounding him. 

_Fuck this moon,_ he thought. _Fuck everything._

But, as a tear escaped the corner of his eye, he heard it. 

Subtle, at first. 

Then louder. 

A roar. 

The roar of cars driving at full speed. 

Murphy jumped on his feet.

In the distance, he could see two rovers coming toward them. 

_What the hell?_

Emori slipped her hand in his. 

Echo held Bellamy more tightly. 

Jackson shielded Clarke with his body. 

Miller aimed his gun. 

And they all waited. 

One minute.

Two.

Then the rovers were circling around them in an intimidating dance, sand splashing everywhere. They eventually stopped. Doors opened. Four people walked out. Two men and two women, wearing grey tunics and black pants, aiming guns at them. Nothing peculiar about them, except one of the men had long dark, purple hair tied into a braid, and one the the women had a golden piercing in the middle of her bottom lip which contrasted nicely with her dark skin. 

She was the first one to move.

She took several steps toward them, her gun and eyes on Miller. "Drop the gun," she ordered him. Then, "Good," when he executed. "Try anything and we shoot you on the spot." Her tone was cold, calculated, menacing. "Who are you?" She wasn't specifically talking to Miller anymore, but to all of them.

"I could ask you the same," Murphy replied, more challenging than he probably should be, and Emori threw him a warning look.

A thick tension filled the air. 

A beat. 

"Please, help us," Jackson said, imploring. "Our friends are dying."

Another beat. 

The woman narrowed her eyes then turned to her companions standing further away behind her. "The blond girl behind him, she has the blood alteration." She was obviously talking about nightblood, but there seemed to be something else implied in her tone; something worrying.

Two beats.

"We need to take her inside," the man with purple hair replied, an urgency in his voice. "There isn't much time left-"

"The hell?" Murphy exclaimed. "You're not taking her, or anyone, anywhere!" 

A couple beats. 

"The eclipse is killing her because of her blood alteration," the man explained as he lowered his gun. He sounded softer than the woman, almost caring. "She can't be exposed to the suns once it's over, or she'll die."

Many beats.

"He's dying too," Echo said. Her cheeks were wet from tears - to Murphy's surprise -, and she had her hands clutched at Bellamy. "Help him, please. He can't die." 

Too many beats. 

The woman sighed, seeming exasperated, then she motioned to the nearest rover with her head. "All of you get in." She turned to her companions. "Thea, Rhys, take both the girl and the boy with you. Kael and I will take the others." 

What choice did they have but to trust these people? 

In the blink of an eye, Murphy found himself in the back of one of the rover, sitting side by side with Emori and facing Echo, Jackson and Miller. Bellamy and Clarke had been laid down in the other one. 

He stared at the front window as they were moving toward the nearest mountain, trying to keep his mind away from the fact that his and his friends' lives were in the hands of strangers. 

The man named Kael, the one with purple hair, who was sitting in the passenger seat, looked at them over his shoulder. "My name's Kael, as you heard, and her's Jade."

Jade drew a sharp breath. "Don't-"

"It's fine." Kael put a soft hand on her shoulder, but she kept her eyes on the road, her hands on the steering wheel. "We don't have to be hostile."

"We _should_ be hostile. For all we know, they could be-"

"They're obviously not." 

But Jade shook her head. "One day, you're gonna get us killed. I swear."

Murphy watched the exchange, intrigued, noticing a clear tension between the two of them. Kael turned his attention back to them, probably waiting for them to say their names or something but no one talked as they were all too shaken. 

"See?" Jade mocked him coldly. "They're not the trusting type either."

Kael raised a brow and got his eyes back on the road, seeming disappointed.

Murphy assumed they were going to a village or something behind the nearest mountain, but he soon realised that Jade was driving straight to- could it be possible, though? _'We need to take her inside.'_

"Wait," Murphy said. "We're not going behind the mountain, are we?"

Jade snorted. "No, boy, we're not. We're going inside."


	17. The heart of Sanctum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank everyone who reads, leaves kuodos, or comments, it's sincerely appreciated ♥ I wish I could update more regularly, but, as I said in a comment under the previous chapter, I don't have a lot of stability in my life right now so I kind of try to write (and update) whenever I can. I'm sorry about that.
> 
> I also want to say, this is the second chapter that I'm excited to post. 
> 
> The first one was 'Beautiful in the swirling green lights', the one where they land on the moon, because it contains elements of the story that will play a really important role later and because, as it was mentioned two chapters ago, it leads to Bellamy realising he never fell out of love with Clarke as he thought he had (I've been teasing what he went through on the Ring for a while now and, don't worry, you'll get to read soon about it). 
> 
> The present chapter is called 'The heart of Sanctum' and, as you probably guessed, it finally introduces (a bit) of Sanctum - which has nothing to do with what we have seen on the show.
> 
> But, honestly, this isn't why I'm excited to post it. 
> 
> I'm excited because this chapter leads to what is my favorite storyline to explore. I mean, remember when Murphy told Bellamy that he had missed a lot? Well.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

  
  
They made it inside through a hidden entrance at the foot of the mountain. 

Even though it was too dark to see anything through the rover's windows, Jade seemed to know where she was going - at least Murphy fucking hoped she did - because she kept driving at full speed for a few more seconds before slowing down and eventually immobilising the rover with an abrupt slam on the brakes that nearly threw them off their seats. 

She turned to them, an unpleasant smile twisting her lips illuminated by the lights in the dashboard. "Nobody moves a single muscle until I say so," she said coldly, waving a gun in their direction, "got it?"

Murphy tried not to roll his eyes. "You must be a real blast at parties," he replied dryly, the words slipping out of his mouth before he could help it. He tried not to flinch as Emori gave him a small but effective kick with her elbow to shut him up.

Jade slightly cocked her head to one side, her eyes darting at him dangerously. "Well, aren't you the funny one, huh?" She raised a brow and waited, as if she was challenging him to provide her with an excuse to beat the shit out of him or something, and, the fucked up truth was, he was tempted to let her do it, to let her numb the guilt pounding through him. 

"Jade," Kael said in a quiet voice, drawing both their attention, "we're helping these people, not menacing them." 

When he put his hand on hers, forcing her to lower the gun, she instantly recoiled from his touch. "Don't you dare," she snarled at him. "I'm the one in charge here."

"I know, but they haven't done anything to justify using violence against them. Russell-"

"I don't care what Russell's orders are," Jade cut him, "I won't make the same mistake twice." She threw him a meaningful look, then, "Give me the handcuffs," she demanded.

" _Jade_." Murphy noticed a familiarity in the way Kael pronounced her name, an intimacy that was certainly more than just a bond shared between colleagues or friends. "Just lower the gun or I will have to report you back."

Jade let out a short and humourless laugh. "Of course you will, you're always such a good little soldier." She spewed out the words out of her mouth like poison, glaring at him until tears welled up in her eyes. 

Kael hesitated only a second before cupping her neck with his hand, bringing her a little closer to him. They stared at each other as if they had forgotten they weren't alone, the tension thrumming between them heavy, nearly palpable. 

Murphy wouldn't be surprised if they either kiss or kill each other, both possibilities being strong ones, but neither happened.

"I shouldn't have come back," Jade said, quietly. "I think- I'm done following Russell's orders." 

Kael shook his head, his thumb softly rubbing the skin of her neck. "Don't-"

"No, _you_ don't." She put the safety back on and gave him the gun. "There's nothing you could say that would change my mind."

In the blink of an eye, she stepped out of the rover and disappeared into the dark without another word.

Murphy exchanged an awkward look with Emori. 

Kael cleared his throat. "Sorry about that. I-" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's been a rough day." His eyes widened. "Oh, sorry, that was insensitive of me to say. I mean, it has been a rough day, but I'm not the one whose friends are dy-"

"Talking about our friends," Emori cut him, suspicious, "why aren't they here yet?" 

The other rover had been following them all the way to the mountain, but Murphy only realised now that it hadn't followed them inside.

He put his head in his hands and laughed, losing it a little. "Fuck," he let out, running his trembling fingers through his hair. "This is the moment where you turn out to be a fucking psycho and tell us you're planning to harvest our blood or something, right?" 

The man stared at him with bewilderment. "I understand you're worried, but the only reason why your friends aren't here is because they've been brought to another entrance - which is closer to the infirmary. They're both in good hands. They'll be just fine, I promise."

"How?" Jackson exclaimed. "How will they be just fine when they are both dying?"

"I've seen worse. They'll be up and running in a day or two."

"Up and running in a day or two," Jackson repeated slowly, then he shook his head in disbelief as if he had just been told the Earth was flat or something. "Bring me to them." 

"Like I said, I understand you're worried - I'd be too -, but-"

"I am worried, but I'm also a doctor." Jackson shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. "The man you took away has infected cuts all over his body and - judging by the symptoms he was presenting fifteen minutes ago - I'm not even sure antibiotics could help at this point!"

"Good thing we don't use antibiotics anymore then," Kael replied with a smile. 

Jackson blinked a few times, looking only more concerned. "Bring me to them, now."

"I really can't. I'm sorry." He sounded genuine. "It wouldn't be safe."

"Why? We can handle ourselves," Miller said. 

"It isn't about your safety but the one of the people living here. I don't know who you are, I can't just let you wander around. I have orders to follow. I'll bring you to your friends once it's sure you don't pose a treat to us." 

"So, we're prisoners," Echo deduced.

"I mean, we're not barbaric. I won't handcuff you and put you inside a cage," Kael said. "I don't want to harm you and I surely don't want to- harvest your blood." He took a peak at Murphy. "I just want to help you. _We_ just want to help you, so let us help you."

"What about Jade?" Miller interjected. "She didn't look like she wanted to help us, she looked like she wanted to beat the shit out of us."

"Jade's just-" Kael paused, thoughtful. "She's a feisty one."

Murphy snorted. "I would have said 'terrifying', but, hey, whatever you need to tell yourself."

"She wasn't always like this. She used to be-" Murphy noticed a sudden fondness in Kael's eyes, but it faded away almost as soon as it had appeared. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. It doesn't concern you. The point is, I wouldn't have let her hurt you, trust me."

Could they trust him, though? Murphy narrowed his eyes, taking a better look at him. He realised he'd been calling him a 'man' in his head as if he was fifty or something when, in reality, he couldn't be more older than Jackson. He had fair skin, dark purple hair longer than his shoulder and put into a braid, and a full beard the same color as his hair. If the situation was any different, Murphy would say he was attractive. 

There was just something about him, something alluring that had nothing to do with his great built and his sharp jaw.

Maybe it was the color of his eyes; a warm grey with gold undertones, an iris charged with so much compassion it was unsettling. Murphy wouldn't be surprised if such eyes could read right through him, right through the hurt and guilt and-

"Who the fuck are you people?" Miller suddenly asked.

"That's kind of hard to answer, don't you think? I mean, we are who we are, just people living inside a mountain."

"Are you with Eligius?" 

"We're descendants of them."

Murphy felt Emori tensing beside him. "We found a solar beacon made by Eligius, but the data was-" She paused. "How many years has it been since the Eligius ship landed?"

"A little more than twelve hundred years ago." 

Murphy heard Emori gasped. "That can't be," she exclaimed. "Eligius only left the Earth two hundred years ago."

Kael furrowed his brow. "Has it only been two hundred years for you, really?" He paused, seeming thoughtful. "Well, it shouldn't be surprising considering time doesn't flow the same here. I'm not sure I understand how it works, but Russell could tell you more about it when he'll meet you."

"Who's Russell?" Echo asked. "You've mentioned him twice."

"I would say he's our leader. I don't think 'leader' is the right word, but he's the one making sure everything works and everyone's happy. He's a good man."

There was a million questions popping in Murphy's mind right now. _Why has Eligius decided to establish on this fucked up moon? What the hell's going on on this moon? Who are the people who attacked them a couple nights ago? Why have they destroyed their transport ship? What are the green lights that have surrounded them? Why aren't the radios working since? Do they have a transport ship to spare so they could go back to the mining ship? What is this place here, inside the mountain? How many people live here? Are there people living elsewhere on this moon, in the mountains nearby?_ He opened his mouth, words burning the tip of his tongue, but Echo was quicker than him. 

She had her head tilted, eyes narrowed. "Why answering our questions when you don't even know if we're a threat or not yet?"

"It's because I don't think you are one." Kael paused, hesitating to say more. "I've always been pretty good to read people. I just look at them and see them for who they really are. I see the good parts and I see the bad parts, and, in the desert, I saw you, all of you." He breathed deeply. "We saw you coming from the sky in a transport ship more than two weeks ago, and we saw the explosion, too. I'm here to help you so, please, let me help you. I know you have more questions, but, for now, we should get going." Kael opened the glove compartment and took out a flashlight. "I'm gonna escort you to, well, it's kind a waiting room."

He put his hand on the handle of the car, and,

"Wait," Murphy said. "What about-" He swallowed. "What about Bellamy and Clarke? How long until we can see them?"

Kael's expression changed to one of shock as he blinked once, twice. "What did you just say?" 

"When can we see our friends?" Murphy repeated.

"No, their-" Kael furrowed his brows, breathing rapidly. "I- sure. I mean, Russell's the one who takes the decisions. He'll come to see you about that, but if there are any changes to their condition, I'll keep you posted. I promise." Kael seemed suddenly agitated, his stare frantic. 

"Is something wrong?" Miller asked.

"Of course not." Kael smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes, then he stepped out of the rover and turned on the flashlight before he went to the back and opened the doors. "Come on," he said. "We need to go." 

As Murphy got out, he couldn't help but wonder if they were making the right choice by following him. Sure, Jade had taken their guns and backpacks away and put them in the other rover, but they could still fight. Even though Kael had a gun, it would be easy to take him out. They were five against one for fuck's sake, two of them trained to fight. They could fight their way back to Bellamy and Clarke, and leave. 

But the question was, do they want to? Fight and leave?

Murphy was exhausted, defeated, scared of this creepy moon, and he knew the others were too. They were all aching to believe there were people willing to help them, aching to catch a fucking break.

So, the answer was, they could fight, but they weren't going to because they didn't want to.

And, deep down, Murphy was ashamed of that, of giving up. 

He imagined Monty would tell him there was no reason to feel ashamed like, _'That's how we do better, dummy, by trusting these people and refusing to fight.'_ But the thing was, Murphy wasn't sure if that was something Monty would really say, or if it was just himself trying to rationalise his need to give up. 

Kael kept the flashlight pointed to the ground as he walked, so they could only see the stone floor as they followed him. He stopped walking after a minute, raising his right hand up in the air in front of him. There was a 'bip' and a flash of light under his palm, and Murphy realised he had put his hand on a screen - probably to identify himself. 

A door slided open near them, an uninviting red light coming out of it. 

"It's fine," Kael said. "The red light is just our way to inform people that there's an eclipse outside. It'll change to orange soon." He stepped inside.

Murphy was the last one to walk inside the room, the door closing automatically behind him. 

They were in a small, empty room, stone walls covered with red fluorescent mushrooms, which was the only source of light. There was no other entrance but an opening in one of the wall, an archway covered from the outside by a black curtain. 

"I'm sorry I have to keep you in here," Kael told them. "I know it isn't comfortable, but it won't be for long." He walked to the curtain, his fingers grasping the fabric. "Oh, right. I almost forgot. If you ever need to, you know, pee or else, just call and one of the guards standing outside will come and bring you to an adjacent bathroom. I'll keep you posted about your friends, I promise." He moved the curtain and disappeared behind it without glancing back.

There was nothing they could do but sit and wait, and, after an hour or so, the mushrooms indeed changed color to orange. 

Murphy wondered why the hell hadn't Russell came to see them yet. Then, he thought of starting a discussion to break the silence and pass the time but realised he wasn't feeling like talking - and he assumed the others weren't either.

Eventually, one guard came to see them. He offered them water and bread - which they accepted gladly -, but refused to answer any of their questions. 

When Murphy took a first bite of the bread, he nearly cried at how good it was. "This bread is fucking heaven and I won't shut up about it," he said, seriously. "I can't believe we're being fed with something else than algea."

"It's good to just eat something," Jackson replied. 

Half an hour later, Murphy's eyes became heavy with exhaustion so he lied down on his side with his back against one of the walls, staring absently at the mushrooms turning into a dark blue. He tried not to think about Bellamy and Clarke, because, fuck, it was too painful, but his mind clearly was the biggest pain in the ass because it could think of nothing else but them, but Clarke breaking down as she put the gun to her head, but Bellamy breaking down as he looked at her lying on the sand, but the both of them dying only feet apart. 

It was sickening not knowing if they were even alive.

As Murphy was slowly drifting off to sleep, he felt someone's warmth against his chest. 

"Whatever happens," Emori whispered to him, "we deal with it together." 

He smiled, wrapping one arm around her and pulling her closer.  
  


**______________________**

  
  
_"Are you asleep?" Murphy whispered._

_"Yes," she replied._

_He rolled his eyes._

_They were lying next to each other on the sand, but Emori had her back turned to him._

_She'd been giving him the cold shoulder all day - not that it was surprising because she'd been ignoring him for the past two weeks but, today, it'd been worse._

_Murphy was so fucking confused._

_Emori had talked with him, smiled to him, even laughed with him when they were swimming in the pool outside the cave. He had thought they were getting better, but they went to explore the cave and kissed and she'd only been more furious with him since then._

_Jackson, Miller, Echo, Emori and him had spent the day searching for Bellamy and Clarke - who had fucking disappeared out of nowhere - and, everytime Murphy had turned to Emori, he had seen her glaring at him with daggers in her eyes._

_"Emori?" he tried again, reaching for her shoulder. "Please, I just want to-"_

_She recoiled. "Leave me alone."_

_He sighed, turning on his back._

_Fucking hell. Why was Emori pissed at him when she was the one who wanted to break up?_

_Murphy thought they were going great after waking up from cryo, but, obviously, she wasn't thinking the same because she was suddenly telling him that it was a mistake to get back together, that she could never be happy with him, that they weren't good to each other, that she wanted to be friends._

_Sure, he could have handled it, all of it, better, but- he was pissed about it. So, he had told her to fuck off then had gone to the lounge hoping to get wasted as fuck and pass out on the couch._

_He hadn't expected Clarke to show up, hadn't expected to talk with her - really talk with her -, hadn't expected to laugh with her and he surely hadn't expected to be kissing her._

_And, the truth was, he didn't regret sleeping with her. They were both drunk, desperate and lonely, they couldn't think straight, but, god, it had felt so good to realise he could have sex with someone else and enjoy the fuck out of it._

_Sure, he hadn't expected to be caught half naked by Bellamy, but that was another story._

_Murphy remembered, though, waking up the next morning with the awful feeling that he had cheated on Emori. That stupid feeling wouldn't leave him alone, so he had been nothing but relieved when Clarke had said she only wanted to be friends, too._

_But. But, but, but._

_The night before the landing, Clarke had asked him to stay with her and it had fucked him up so bad, the intimacy of sharing a bed with her, with someone else than the only girl he had ever loved. It had felt like he was betraying Emori all over again, but, eventually, it had started to feel better, good even. He wasn't even thinking about how hurt he was, how alone he was. He was just... feeling good, curled up against Clarke._

_He remembered lying on the bed wanting to run away with her, run away from all the ghosts haunting them. He remembered thinking they could be happy together, thinking they could love each other._

_Only, the thought of loving her had scared him so much that he couldn't stay any longer. He had sneaked back to his room in the middle of the night, hoping Clarke wouldn't ask him about it - and she hadn't._

_The 'Clarke thing' had fucked him up for two weeks._

_Two fucking weeks of mostly ignoring her - not that she had noticed, though, because she only had eyes for Bellamy -, two weeks of hoping the feeling growing inside him would go away._

_But it hadn't, and he had felt like he couldn't talk to her about it._

_Then, there had been the explosion._

_He had been so afraid to lose her that- well, it had pissed him off when he had realised she didn't care about him, that she only cared about getting back to Madi._

_The night after, though, she had pleaded him to not push her away, so he had told her the truth. Her answer had surprised him, but, then, he had thought about it a lot since he couldn't fall asleep and - when talking to Bellamy while the campfire was dying out - he had came to the conclusion that she was right._

_He loves Clarke, but he isn't in love with her._

_He had wanted to be, though._

_Had wanted to run away and start something new instead of confronting his issues._

_And the truth was, he could never be as much in love with someone as he was with Emori._

_Besides, he saw how Clarke and Bellamy were looking at each other : the exact same way they used to before Praimfaya only with more angst._

_They were both idiots._

_Idiots nowhere to be found._

_Murphy rolled to his side again. "We can't lose them," he whispered, his voice trembling. "We can't lose them too."_

_Emori seemed to tense, then she turned to face him. "We won't," she replied, softly._

_The purple light of the mushrooms was reflecting in her beautiful eyes._

_They both stared at each other for a while, then, "I'm sorry," he murmured, expecting her to shove his apology back down his throat._

_But._

_A couple beats._

_"For what?" she asked, her brows furrowed._

_"Everything." He paused, gathering the courage to say what he had been thinking for a while now. "I'm sorry for being a coward-"_

_"That's a good start," she teased him._

_He couldn't help but smile. "Shut up."_

_"You shut up."_

_"Well, if I shut up, I can't apologize."_

_"You're such a big dick sometimes."_

_"Isn't that why you fell in love with me, though?"_

_He meant it as a joke, but when she gave him a hurt look, the smile vanished out of his lips._

_He breathed deeply, then,_

_"I'm sorry for being a coward and always finding excuses to not confront my issues. I'm sorry for hoping you wouldn't realise you deserved better than my excuses. I'm sorry for being angry at you when you realised it. I'm sorry for putting walls around myself and pushing you away. I'm sorry for making you feel like you were in the wrong for wanting to belong with other people and not just me. I'm sorry for leaving you in the middle of the night after five years and a half of relationship and never coming back."_

_"John-"_

_"I'm not done."_

_"Quiet, you guys!" Miller whispered angrily. "People are trying to sleep."_

_"Don't care," Murphy shrugged. He turned his eyes back to Emori. "I'm sorry I told you I'd do better but didn't really try to once we woke up from cryo. I'm sorry I slept with Clarke and threw it at your face to hurt you." He reached for her hand. "I'm so sorry I didn't want to do better before. I'm sorry for everything."_

_"John-"_

_"Don't. I'm not saying all of that to get something from you in return. I'm telling you all this because I want you to know that I've never thought you weren't worth living with, Emori. The thing is, I just never thought I deserved to be happy, to settle down. It's so much easier to run away from happiness - from the people who make you happy - than to accept and confront the worst parts of yourself that make you think you don't deserve it._

_"But I don't want to run anymore. I don't want to keep putting walls around myself and keep pushing people away. I want to do better. I know I can't magically change overnight - even though it'd be fucking great -, but I'm ready to work for it._

_"I'm ready to be happy."_

_Tears welled up in her eyes._

_"Also, maybe those black flowers got us high or something, but I don't think they made us feel things that weren't already there. I wanted to kiss you before even setting a foot in that room. Fuck, I just- I don't regret making out with you because I love you."_

_Emori blinked at him. "What about Clarke? I thought you-"_

_"I'm not in love with her. I'm in love with you."_

_She nodded, brushing a tears off her face, and turned her back to him without another word._

_When Murphy opened his eyes hours later, he found her staring at him intently._

_"I didn't break up with you because I don't love you anymore, John. I thought- I mean, we were going to find a new home on this moon, and I thought it was only a matter of time before you would start putting up walls around you. I didn't want to get through that again." She paused. "I can't bring myself to stop loving you. I just can't. I- I want to give us a last chance, but, this time, I want us to take things slow. I want to be sure you're really trying to do better not only for us but for you too."_

_At some point during the day, as they were searching for Bellamy and Clarke - and also a way out of that creepy cave -, she slipped her hand in his without meeting his eyes._

_He smiled brightly._

_Fuck, he couldn't wait to tell Clarke about how he had finally poured his heart out to Emori._

_Maybe he could convince her to finally do the same to Bellamy._

_Murphy squeezed Emori's hand, leaning closer to her. "Whatever happens," he whispered in her ear, "we deal with it together."_  
  


**______________________**

  
  
Murphy opened his eyes to the sight of the others sitting in circle in the middle of the room, talking quietly. He yawned and stretched his arms and legs, then he rubbed his neck which was stiff after a night sleeping on the stone floor. "Sup, guys?"

They all turned to him.

"Hey," Emori said, fondly. "Come here."

The room had seemed brighter when he had woken up, but Murphy realised it was only because the mushrooms weren't a dark blue anymore but a light one. He pushed himself up and went to sit close to Emori, his left shoulder grazing her right one. 

"What did I miss?" He asked, concerned by their tense expression. 

"Nothing important," Echo replied. "We were just discussing our options." Her skin was so pale and the dark circles under her eyes so prominent that Murphy wondered if she had slept at all.

"Our options?"

"We still don't know what's going on with Bellamy and Clarke, man," Miller explained. "We need to be ready to fight to get back to them if they won't let us see them."

Emori took his hand. "I know we're all tired of fighting, but-"

"I don't need convincing. I'm in." 

"I thought-" Emori was staring at him in surprise. "I mean, we don't know what's waiting for us outside this room." She paused. "We could get killed."

He shrugged. "What else is new?"

Emori smiled, brightly. "So, we're all in." She turned to the others. "What were we saying just before John woke up?"

"I was saying they must have a transport ship we could steal," Miller replied with a little too much enthusiasm.

"Right, but we can't assume they have one," Emori said, thoughtful. "There wasn't any mothership orbiting the moon when we arrived, so that means two possibilites. Either the Eligius mothership crashed on the moon and some people obviously survived, either the crew separated with some of them landing on the moon in a transport ship and others leaving elsewhere with the mothership." 

She paused. "Honestly, both possibilities are terrifying. The first one means we don't have a way back to space, the second one means there are more of them up there somewhere." She pointed to the ceiling, but Murphy understood she was refering to space. "Even if we're lucky and find a transport ship, we have to be ready to fight in case they've came back and boarded our ship. I mean, we haven't been able to talk to someone on the ship since the explosion. Maybe the problem isn't the radios, but-" 

She didn't finish her sentence, she didn't have to. 

Maybe Eligius III had boarded their ship and taken Raven and Jordan hostages.

"Could it be possible they have found a way for the mothership to land without crashing?" Echo asked.

Emori shook her head. "I don't think so, not if the Eligius III mothership is similar to the IV one. These kind of ships are made to stay in space."

"So we're fucked," Murphy deduced.

Emori squeezed his hand, gently, her skin warm on his. "Finding a transport ship is still better than not finding one. I mean, it would suck a little less if at least we have a chance to get back to space, don't you think?"

"Well, when you put it like that."

Before they could talk more, though, they heard the curtain moving and saw someone walking in. Murphy blinked twice because, hell, if it wasn't for the purple hair, he wouldn't have recognized him. 

Kael's hair wasn't in a braid but in a bun with loose strands around his face, his full beard had been trimmed down, and there was a silver ring on his nose and lip that Murphy was sure weren't there before. He was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and a black hoodie with intriguing artwork and the words 'Iron Maiden' printed in red on it, of which he had rolled up the sleeves just enough to expose colourful tattoos on his forearms.

Murphy narrowed his eyes at the hoodie, thinking he had seen the words before, but where? 

"I'm sorry I couldn't come sooner," Kael told them. "There's been some agitation- a good one, though, but I'm not supposed to talk about it because Russell wants to be the one to-" He rubbed his neck, seeming nervous, then his eyes landed on Murphy. "I just didn't want you to think that I forgot about the promise I made."

Murphy felt his stomach turning upside down. "Are they-" He swallowed. "Are they still alive?"

"They are - still unconscious but both out of danger." Kael's mouth curved into a smile, a warm one. "They're going to be fine." 

Murphy closed his eyes as he let out a sigh of relief, feeling like he could breathe again. 

"Russell's coming to see you, but he won't be here until at least an hour. So, I thought-" Kael let out a short laugh. "I mean, no offense, you guys, but you all need to take a shower."

He wasn't wrong.

They followed him behind the curtain, through a corridor brightened by light blue mushrooms growing through the tiny cracks of the stone walls. They walked past so many hanging curtains - all tinted black -, so many hidden rooms, but they didn't cross path with anyone. They reached a flight of stairs upstairs which brought them to a similar corridor - the only difference was, the curtains weren't tinted black but charcoal. 

Kael brought them to the end of it, to the only curtain which was the same color as the ocean. "I'll wait here," he told them, crossing his arm over the artwork of his hoodie. "Take the time you need." 

But Murphy wouldn't move, would only stared at the words printed in red. "Iron Maiden," he said as he suddenly remembered, "it's a band, right?" He had a song of them in his music player, but he couldn't recall the title. 

"It's not only a band," Kael replied with a smile, "it's the greatest one." 

Murphy looked at him more closely. "The clothes you're wearing," he realised, "they aren't worn out." 

"Why would they be?" Kael asked, confused.

'Because that's how clothes always have been,' Murphy wanted to answer, 'plain, used, ripped, worn out.' He'd never seen beautiful clothes, colourful ones. 

"Nevermind," he replied then turned to the others. 

Miller moved the curtain to the side and stepped into the purple light coming out of the room. Jackson followed him, then it was Murphy's turn. Once he walked inside, it didn't surprise him to see purple mushrooms covering stone walls, but- 

"Holy shit," he said, turning to Emori behind him who had wide and bright eyes as she looked around the large circular room.

There were tens of waterfalls, delicate showers rushing out of small holes in the ceiling and disappearing through natural drains in the floor. The water was reflecting the light of the mushrooms in a way that it looked like there were thousands of dancing, purple stars shimmering everywhere in the room. 

The constant sound of the water spashing on the stone was loud, but it was calming, soothing.

Murphy breathed the humid air, thinking this room was breathtaking, almost unreal. 

"Guys, look!" Miller exclaimed while walking to a stone bench near them. 

There were clean towels and clothes folded on it (black pants, grey sweaters and underwears), and there were also a lot of soap bars - white ones, yellow ones, purple ones, green ones. Murphy took one of each in his hands and smelled them, noticing they had different scents : vanilla, citrus, lavender, piny.

He chose the yellow soap, the citrus scent, then walked further away to one of the waterfalls. He turned his back to the others for a little privacy as he removed his clothes and got under the water, which was just warm enough on his skin.

 _Shit_ , he thought. It felt good, so fucking good. 

Once they were all cleaned and changed into the clothes that had been left for them on the bench, Kael brought them back to the room. He stayed with them, standing silently beside the curtain.

Emori tried to get some informations out of him - as to what they should expect from Russell -, but he shook his head and said they had nothing to be nervous about. But, of course, it only made Murphy feel more and more nervous as he paced around the room, waiting for the man to show up and interrogate the hell out of them. 

Should they be completely honest with him, or should they omit informations? How they could prove they weren't a threat so they would get to see Bellamy and Clarke without having to fight their way to them? 

Finally, a man, who was probably in his mid-fifties, walked into the room. He had long, grey hair and beard, and he was dressed in a flamboyant, glittering red robe which Murphy thought was straight out of fiction. He seemed surreal, giving the impression that he didn't belong to this place but to an alternative universive with people riding unicorns or something. 

"Russell," Kael greeted him warmly. 

Russell smiled at him, and it was the most charismatic smile Murphy had ever seen; so charismatic he just wanted to slap it off his face because who fucking smiles this wide?

The man stared at them intently, taking them all in before stepping graciously toward the middle of the room. Murphy couldn't help but recoil against one of the wall, crossing his arms and waiting for a question that wasn't coming, a long silence filling the room instead.

That was fucking awkward.

Eventually, Russell exchanged a look with Kael. "Play it," he ordered. 

Kael nodded then took a small device out of one of his jeans pocket, something resembling a music player, and clicked on its screen.

_"Bellamy, it's me."_

Murphy's heart skipped more than a few beats. 

Clarke?

_"I'm alive."_

It couldn't be. 

He thought he must have heard wrong, but she continued to talk. He put his head in his hands as he slided against the wall. Her voice was nothing more than a sound in the background, nothing more than pain piercing through him.

It took him a few seconds to be able to focus on the words she was saying.

_"Where was I? Oh, right. Polis. Up until that moment, I believe I'd live in the bunker with the others, with my mom. I can't bear the thought of leaving her down there, but the hard truth is, I could dig for years and never reach that door. I've been by myself now for two months, but this is the first time I feel alone."_

Murphy was having a hard time breathing. He wrapped his arms around his knees, trembling, and turned to the others, noticing they all looked as shocked as he felt. 

It was her radio calls, but how? 

"When Eligius crashed on this moon more than a thousand years ago," Russell said, calmly, as he stood in the middle of the room, "they completely lost contact with the Earth. They found this mountain, established in it and tried everything they could to communicate with their home. They failed, and failed, and failed again but they never gave up and neither did their children, nor their grandchildren, nor their great-grandchildren until, one day, they succeeded to build a satellite tower powerful enough to intercept messages coming from the Earth. 

"The first message to be intercepted was from a girl, Clarke, who was talking to a boy in space named Bellamy. In fact, the only messages to be ever intercepted were from this girl. Through her, people learned that the Earth had been destroyed, twice, and that she was one of the last living humans along with a child she had found, hundreds of people stuck inside a bunker and seven others in space - one of whom was Bellamy.

"Every time one of the girl's messages was intercepted, it was broadcasted through the entire mountain so that everyone could hear it. People wanted to know what was going on on the Earth, because they were hoping to go back home one day, and they were hoping to hear that life was growing back. 

"The interesting twist is, people eventually became so invested in the girl's story, in what she had to say to the boy, that they started to pray every night for the boy to come back to her, for them to find their way back together." 

Russell paused, turning his head to Kael. "Play the 6.001 then the 6.002."

"Both of the 6.002?" Kael asked. 

"Yes, both."

Kael nodded, clicking on the screen again.

 _"Bellamy?"_ Clarke's voice cracked as she pronounced his name. _"I- Where are you? It's been six years today, and I-_ She cut the radio off for a moment. _"I'm scared. I'm scared, Bellamy. I'm scared I'll never get to see you again because, shit, I cannot not see you again. I cannot. I cannot. Please come home. Why aren't you home y-yet?"_ Murphy's throat tightened as he heard her cry, desperate sobs coming out of her. _"I miss you so fucking much, and I-"_

It stopped.

There was a long silence, followed by, _"Bellamy, I- I'm sorry for yesterday. I've tried to keep it together this past year, but it's been so fucking hard. I'm scared you'll never come back. Shit, I can't- I don't think I can talk to you today either. I just can't do it. I'm sorry."_

Murphy closed then opened his eyes to Emori sitting next to him. He realised he'd been crying when she palmed his cheek and wiped a tear with her thumb. 

Then,

_"Hello? Is it working? Bellamy? It's Madi. Hum. I know it's the first time we get to talk, but we don't have much time. I don't want Clarke to wake up and freak out because I sneaked out of my room so- I'm afraid I'm gonna have to be blunt with you, Bellamy Blake._

_"It sucks. It sucks that you aren't here with us. I know, I know, I shouldn't use that word, but it's true. It sucks. It's been six years yesterday. I suppose you have a good reason for not having come back yet. I mean, you better have a good reason because it's been really hard for Clarke this past year._

_"I'm worried about her. I haven't seen her draw in a while, she barely eats, barely smiles. Today, she stayed in her room, crying. She tries her best to hide it, but I can see how sad she is that you haven't come back._

_"She tells me stories about you everyday, you know. She has this light in her eyes when she says your name. I'm not sure I get it, but, one time, she told me you were her heart- or that you were in her heart? Anyway, it's obvious she-_

_"Ok, I said I was gonna be blunt, so here it is : Clarke's in love with you, Bellamy, and she's being an idiot about it. She thinks you don't love her the same way she loves you, but that's not what I think. I mean, dressing yourself as an Azgeda and crossing a field full of them only to get her back - which is my favorite story of you by the way -, that's being in love._

_"Hope you're aware of that._

_"But, honestly, considering you never told her about your feeling, you're probably just as much an idiot as her. I wish you could see how hard I'm rolling my eyes right now._

_"Anyway, I'm calling you because Clarke needs you._

_"And I need you too, in a way. I know we never met, but- I don't know, Clarke talks about you so much that I feel like you are meant to be a part of me, of us. A part of our family._

_"So, you better come back soon, Bellamy Blake, or I swear I'll spend my life finding a way to bring you back myself._

_"I- I should go now. Can't wait to meet you soon! Bye!"_

Murphy smiled through his tears. The hobbit was something else.

"Clarke never said explicitely that she was in love with Bellamy," Russell said, still standing in the middle of the room, "but people always assumed she was because of the way she talked to him, or about him. Madi, the child, confirmed her feelings were real. So, when the last message to be intercepted came a few days after, when Clarke told Bellamy that she was seeing him coming from the sky, the reaction was explosive; for weeks, people celebrated the story of two soulmates separated by stars finding their way back to each other. Even if it's been four hundred years to us, Clarke and Bellamy had never been forgotten. Their love was so inspiring, so powerful, that we still celebrate it once a year."

When Russell paused and his words sank in, Murphy raised his brows so high he wouldn't be surprised if they had flew off his face. "It's a prank, right?" he whispered into Emori's ear. "It gotta be."

"I dont think so," she replied, seeming baffled too. 

"When I decided to send Kael, Jade, Thea and Rhys to help you in the desert," Russell continued, "I assumed you were strange explorers from Earth, descendants of the people who - along with Clarke and Bellamy - had survived the second apocalypse. I was in the infirmary when Kael came and reported to me that the girl and the boy whom I was looking at had their names. I looked at them closer, noticing they both matched the description Clarke made of them through her radio calls : short blonde hair and blue eyes for her; curly dark hair, freckles, dimple and scar above the lip for him. I couldn't stop the rumor of them being here from spreading, and that's why Kael and I couldn't come to see you sooner. Everyone has been agitated since last night, wondering if it's true, if Clarke and Bellamy really are here." He paused. "So, I'm asking you, is it true?"

Russell stared at them more intently, impatiently waiting for an answer as if he hadn't just turned their world upside down. 

Murphy could only blink at him. 

"It's true," Echo said through her teeth. "It's them." She looked like she was about to throw up.

Russell's eyes stayed on her for a minute, studying her, then, "It really is true then," he said as he smiled warmly. "Come, my friends. I have something to show you."  
  


**______________________**

  
  
_Murphy was lying on his back, staring at the green planet above him in the sky as he listened to the sound of the campfire slowly dying out at his feet. He turned his head to Clarke, wishing he could think of something else than the words she had spoken to him before she fell asleep an hour ago._

_'You only think you have feelings for me because you see me as a way out of the mess you made. If you go with me instead of her, you won't have to face the demons you couldn't face while in space.'_

_Her words were like a broken record spinning over and over again in his head, torturing him._

_Could she be right?_

_Could it be possible that he wasn't in love with her like he thought he had been for the past two weeks, that he had only been trying to run away from his issues once again?_

_'When you were both on the ground, you fought for her. In space though, you stopped fighting for her.'_

_Fuck, he wasn't going to sleep tonight, was he?_

_Murphy sat up and put his head in his hands, sighing deeply. This little trip they were having on this shithole of a moon was so bad he almost wished he was back to that minefield with Jaha._

_"Trouble sleeping?"_

_He jolted, reaching for the gun hidden into his sleeping bag while glancing behind him, and-_

_"Fuck," he exclaimed quietly as he realised who it was, "really? I almost shit my pants. I thought it was-"_

_Bellamy rolled his eyes. "You thought what? That the people who attacked us would just casually look at you sleeping then ask if you were having troubling sleeping when realising you weren't, in fact, sleeping at all?"_

_Murphy smirked. "Is this your way of telling me that you love looking at me sleeping, Blake?"_

_"Shut up, Murphy."_

_"That's how bad it has become between us, huh?" Murphy asked, raising a brow. 'You went back to 'shut up' instead of 'quiet'?_

_Bellamy shrugged then looked away from him._

_Murphy noticed he was sitting on the ground, his sleeping bag rolled up beside him. "Didn't you say we all needed to sleep?"_

_"I did."_

_"Then why aren't you?"_

_"I-" Bellamy quickly glanced at Clarke. "I have a lot on my mind, that's all."_

_Murphy nodded and, as a silence streched into the night, he realised neither of them knew what to say to the other._

_The tension emanating from Bellamy was nearly palpable, a tension that had been there since he had caught him and Clarke having sex. Sure, Bellamy had apologized the night before the landing for having been a shitty friend to him since it happened, but, the truth was, it hadn't changed anything between them, and Murphy was getting tired of being ignored by the person who was supposed to be his best friend only because he had slept with Clarke._

_"Wanna address the obvious?" he asked, a challenge lingering in his voice._

_Bellamy shot him a warned look and clenched his jaw, but he kept silent._

_"So?" Murphy insisted. Then, "Fine. I'll do it," when he kept being ignored, "I'll address the obvious." He breathed deeply. "You're angry at me for sleeping with Clarke when you have no fucking right to be."_

_"I have all the fucking rights to be," Bellamy snarled at him. "How could you-"_

_"How could I what?"_

_"Nevermind."_

_"No, say it. I wanna hear it."_

_"How could you sleep with her when you knew how I..." He trailed off, running a hand through his hair._

_"When I knew what, huh? How you felt? Is that it?" Murphy asked, dryly. "How could I fucking know how you felt - or feel, Bellamy, when all you do is bottling up?"_

_Bellamy shook his head, tensing. "I don't-"_

_"Yes, you do!" Murphy knew he should just shut his mouth, but he was exhausted, and lost, and hurt, and a mean part of himself wanted to push Bellamy to his breaking point. "After Praimfaya, you- you completely shut yourself away from us and never came back! You never came back! Someone else did! Sure, I get it, you were grieving, but - spoiler alert - we all were! Monty lost Jasper, for fuck's sake! His bestfriend! They knew each other for so long, they probably shared diapers or something. You weren't the only one who lost someone, but you were the only one who abandoned us when we needed everyone to find a way to survive through the first weeks!"_

_Bellamy was staring at him with so much hurt. "Fuck you, Murphy." Both his hands clenched into fists, his voice quiet but trembling with rage. "You have no idea-"_

_"That's exactly the point," Murphy cut him. "I have no idea because you don't talk. You disappear for weeks, refuse to talk when you come back then, the next thing we know, you're in a relationship with the girl who's responsible for the death of your ex-girlfriend! I mean, what the fuck, Bellamy! Is this a way to punish yourself, or is this because you don't have to feel with her, huh?"_

_"Shut-"_

_"No, I won't shut up. I won't because you need to hear this. You're with Echo, Bellamy! You're supposed to be in love with her and, yet, you're jealous because I slept with Clarke? Is this something that makes sense to you? Maybe there is something you'd like to share with me?"_

_"I'm not having this discussion," Bellamy said, reaching angrily for his sleeping bag._

_"You're in love with her," Murphy nearly whispered. "You've always been, and we both know how different things would be if she had went to space with us."_

_Bellamy looked like he had lost the ability to move, or talk, or even breathe, staring at him with the most desperate eyes as if being in love with her was tearing him apart so hard he could only seek an escape from his own feelings._

_And in that moment, that brief moment, Murphy understood._

_Clarke was right._

_He wasn't in love with her, he only wanted to be so he could avoid to feel the pain, to feel the loss of his true love - as cheesy as it sounded._

_Bellamy and him were the same in a way, both searching to not hurt anymore._

_Murphy softened. "Don't worry," he said, "I won't tell her, but- you should." _

_Bellamy and Clarke were both idiots._

_She could say whatever bullshit she wanted about needing to move on because they were both in love with a ghost, but, the truth was, they were both ghosts because they lost the other._

_"I'm with Echo," Bellamy deflected. "I love her."_

_Murphy sighed, stopping himself from rolling his eyes. "Sure." Bellamy was more of an idiot that he thought. "You have no reason to keep ignoring me then." He turned his back to him and went back to lying on his side._

_He eventually fell asleep and when he woke up, the next morning, he wasn't expecting to search for Clarke in the woods only to find her completely wrecked because Bellamy had kissed her._  
  


**______________________**

  
  
Murphy didn't remember standing up and following Russell. He just realised, at one point, that he was walking behind him, feeling too overwhelmed by the memory of hearing Clarke's radio calls to focus on anything else but the effort it was taking him to put a foot in front of the other. 

Had it been a minute or a hundred since they had left the room? 

He had no idea. 

Could be either. 

Was he hearing background sounds or was he slowly losing it? 

He couldn't tell.

Could be either, too.

But the sounds became louder and louder, voices, laughs, a pleasing melody filled with happiness, and when Emori asked him, "Do you hear that?", he realised he wasn't totally losing it.

Murphy almost crashed into Russell's back when he stopped, suddenly, in front of a white curtain which he moved to one side to let them step into the bright, shinning light. 

Murphy blinked through his fingers, waiting for his eyes to adjust and-

"Shit," he said. 

He couldn't believe what he was seeing, and hearing, and smelling. 

He was standing in an enormous room, more than thirty floors high, rainbows of fluorescent mushrooms running up to the shaped dome ceiling. Trees growing from squares of grass amongst the stone tiles of the floor, tall trees with twisted trunks and etheral leaves, beautiful trees full of- of birds, fucking birds, minuscule, cute, chirping birds.

Then, there were the people, hundreds of people, maybe thousands, talking, smiling, laughing. Some of them sitting at long, wooden tables scattered everywhere, others singing and dancing on a stage in the middle of the room, everyone surrounded by colorful kiosks displaying delicious meals, eccentric clothes, and intriguing art. 

The air was smelling good, sweet, the scent of foods Murphy had only dreamed of tasting.

"Welcome to the Atrium," Russell said, cheerfully, "the heart of Sanctum."

Russell continued to talk, explaining why they decided to name this place Sanctum, but Murphy wasn't really listening as he could feel the weight of people's gaze on them, curious stares piercing through him. 

Everything was too loud, too bright, too happy. 

Everything was too much.

His heart was thumping rapidly, painfully. He was losing it, needed to run, didn't want to though, so he just turned his back to everyone, everything, and tried to compose himself, when something above the white curtain caught his attention. 

"Fuck me," Murphy let out in a sharp breath as he stared at it, all of it, halfway up to the ceiling, arching his head back to take the full sight of it, eyes completely drawn to it, to how vibrant and imposing it was.

"Oh!" He heard Russell exclaim behind him. "I was getting to that. It's a beautiful mural, isn't it? We call it 'Soulmates' because, as I told you earlier, their love was - or, should I say, is - powerful. Trully one of a kind."

Murphy couldn't help the nervous laugh escaping his throat as it dawned on him, the whole fucking thing finally hitting him. How could any of this be real? Really? How could he be looking at the painting of a girl longing at the sky, at the stars shinning over her, at the painting of a boy aching to get back home, to the earth below him? 

"Is that- Bellamy and Clarke?" Emori asked. 

"Of couse, it's them," Russell replied. "Well, it's how we imagined them to be. They are both so important to us, to all of us that remembering their love through celebrations once a year wasn't enough. People wanted something more... permanent."

Murphy was speechless.

Here, in Sanctum, Clarke's radio calls had not only been intercepted four hundred years ago but they also been turned into an epic love story, in which Bellamy and her were considered soulmates.

Holy shit, really.

He couldn't fucking wait to tell these two angsty idiots about it.


End file.
